Despite the title "Bimbo's Express", the cartoon has nothing to do with ladies of easy virtue or prostitution. Nope. This Bimbo is the early Fleischer Brothers character--one who was a regular in Betty Boop cartoons. It's not all that funny--aside from one very off-color remark*. Now I am NOT sure if you'd call this a Betty Boop cartoon per se. Yes, she's in it but she's a relatively minor character and she hasn't yet lost the odd doggy ears they put on her in her earliest films. Instead, she's a work in progress--more Boop-like than in her first film, "Dizzy Dishes" but not the Boop we all are familiar with today.
*The off-color remark occurred when Bimbo arrived and knocked on the door. Betty told him to stay outside as she was in her nightie—at which point Bimbo told her to just take it off! A cute joke, but not the most wholesome of jokes—and clearly one that would NOT have been allowed if the film had debuted after the toughened Production Code was enacted in mid-1934.
**As far as the ears go, when Betty was first introduced, she was a part-dog/part-lady hybrid. As the first year or so of her cartoons passed, she became less and less dog-like. Here in "Bimbo's Express" she still sports doggy ears. Having a dog for a boyfriend made sense if Betty was a dog, but later when she was all girl, this became problematic and creepy—so the romance was eventually eliminated.
