Who was Betty Boop? New stage musical in Chicago tells a tale of the timeless cartoon creation

Animator Max Fleischer and his creation Betty Boop in the early 1930s. (Fleischer Studios, Inc.)

One was the creator of a squeaky-clean mouse named Mickey, the other the brains behind a squeaky-voiced flirt with the catchphrase “Boop-oop-a-doop.”

But the two great American animators — Walt Disney and Max Fleischer — didn’t meet for the first time until 1956, more than a quarter of a century after the introduction of each of their hugely famous creations.