Betty Boop made her first appearance in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, released on August 9, 1930, the seventh installment in Max Fleischer's Talkartoon series. A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, she was described in a 1934 court case as: "combining in appearance the childish with the sophisticated--a large round baby face with big eyes and a nose like a button, framed in a somewhat careful coiffure, with a very small body of which perhaps the leading characteristic is the most self-confident little bust imaginable".

The character was originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle, but she quickly made the transition from an incidental human-canine breed to a completely human female character.

Although Clara Bow is often given credit as being the inspiration for Betty Boop, Fleischer told his artists that he wanted a caricature of singer Helen Kane, who performed in a style shared by many performers of the day. In early appearances, Betty was called "Nancy Lee" or "Nan McGrew"--names derived from the Helen Kane film Dangerous Nan McGrew (1930), and Kane later sued Fleischer over Betty's signature "Boop Oop a Doop" line.

Poor Cinderella was Fleischer Studio's first color film, and the only appearance of Betty Boop in color during the Fleischer era. Betty's hair was colored red instead her typical black hair to take advantage of this.

Bimbo was a tubby, black and white cartoon pup who became the protagonist and star of Fleischer's Talkartoons series and was even positioned by the studio as a rival to Disney's Mickey Mouse. He starred in several famous cartoon shorts of the 1930s but became less prominent after his girlfriend Betty Boop gained unexpected stardom and popularity with fans, with the Talkartoons cartoon retooled to give her top billing as the Betty Boop series in 1932.

Betty Boop's strict Jewish parents make only one appearance, in the cartoon Minnie the Moocher (1932). Betty's parents are all over her case, hassling her because she will not eat her sauerbaten, so Betty runs away from home with Bimbo--only to return after she gets lost in a haunted cave and encounters a ghostly walrus.

The studio's 1931 Christmas card featured Betty in bed with Santa Claus, winking at the viewer.

Betty works as a lion tamer and a tightrope walker at the circus. After her performance on the high wire gets the villainous ringmaster all worked up, he follows Betty to her tent and threatens her job if she does not submit to his whims. Betty begs the ringmaster to cease his advances, singing "Don't Take My Boop-Oop-A-Doop Away". Fortunately, Koko the Clown is outside, practicing his juggling, and leaps in to save Betty's virtue, knocking the ringmaster out cold with a mallet.

At the age of 17, Mae Questel won a talent contest by imitating actress and singer Helen Kane. She also impersonated other celebrities such as Fanny Brice, Marlene Dietrich, Eddie Cantor, Mae West, and Maurice Chevalier. When Max Fleischer saw her act, he realized she had the perfect voice for his Betty Boop character. Questel's "Boop-boop-a-doop" routine, done in a style similar to the version Helen Kane created, while at the same time evoking something of the naughty allure of film star Clara Bow, was exactly what Fleischer wanted. He hired her in 1931, and although Questel began as one of a number of actresses providing the character's voice, she soon took over the role exclusively.

The content of Betty's films was drastically altered by the National Legion of Decency and the Production Code of 1934, also known as the Hays Code, which placed specific restrictions on the content films could reference with sexual innuendos. Right from the start, Joseph Breen, the new head film censor, had numerous complaints, ordering the removal of the introduction which had started the cartoons because Betty's winks and shaking hips were deemed "suggestive of immorality". No longer a carefree flapper, she became a spinster housewife or a career girl who wore a fuller dress or skirt and became more mature and wiser, compared to her earlier years.