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Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick.[2][3][4][5][6][7] She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising. 

A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, Betty Boop was described in a 1934 court case as: "combin[ing] 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."[8] Despite having been toned down in the mid-1930s as a result of the Hays Code to appear more demure, she became one of the best-known and popular cartoon characters in the world. 
Betty Boop made her first appearance on August 9, 1930, in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes the seventh installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. Although Clara Bow is often given as being the model for Boop,[9] she actually began as a caricature of singer Helen Kane. The character was originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle.[10] Betty Boop appeared as a supporting character in 10 cartoons as a flapper girl with more heart than brains. In individual cartoons, she was called "Nancy Lee" or "Nan McGrew" – derived from the 1930 Helen Kane film Dangerous Nan McGrew – usually serving as a girlfriend to studio star, Bimbo. 

Within a year, Betty made the transition from an incidental human-canine breed to a totally human female character. While much credit has been given to Grim Natwick for her creation, her transformation into the cute cartoon girl was due to the work of Berny Wolf, Seymour Kneitel, “Doc” Crandall, Willard Bowsky, and James “Shamus” Culhane.[11] By the release of Any Rags Betty Boop was forever establish as a human character. Her floppy poodle ears became hoop earrings, and her black poodle nose became a girl's button-like nose. 

Betty's voice was first performed by Margie Hines, and was later performed by several different voice actresses, including Kate Wright, Bonnie Poe, Ann Rothschild (also known as Little Ann Little), and most notably, Mae Questel. Questel, who began voicing Betty Boop in "Bimbo's Silly Scandals"(1931), and continued with the role until 1938, returning 50 years later in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit". Today, Betty is voiced by Tress MacNeille, Sandy Fox and Cindy Robinson[12] in commercials. 

Although it has been assumed that Betty's first name was established in the 1931 Screen Songs cartoon, Betty Co-ed, this "Betty" is an entirely different character. Even though the song may have led to Betty's eventual christening, any reference to Betty Co-ed as a Betty Boop vehicle is incorrect although the official Betty Boop website describes the titular character as a "prototype" of Betty. There are at least 12 Screen Songs cartoons that featured Betty Boop or a similar character. Betty appeared in the first "Color Classic" cartoon Poor Cinderella, her only theatrical color appearance in 1934. In the film, she was depicted with red hair as opposed to her typical black hair. Betty also made a cameo appearance in the feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), in which she appeared in her traditional black and white and was voiced by Mae Questel. 

Betty Boop was the star of the Talkartoons by 1932 and was given her own series that same year, beginning with Stopping the Show. From that point on, she was crowned "The Queen of the Animated Screen". The series was popular throughout the 1930s, lasting until 1939.

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Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in comic strips and mass merchandising. 

A caricature of a Jazz Age flapper, Betty Boop was described in a 1934 court case as: "combin[ing] 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."[8] Despite having been toned down in the mid-1930s as a result of the Hays Code to appear more demure, she became one of the best-known and popular cartoon characters in the world

Betty Boop was created by Max Fleischer of Fleischer Studios, and made her debut in 1930’s Talkartoon cartoon short “Dizzy Dishes.” The cartoon originally starred the voice talent of Margie Hines, and Betty appeared as an anthropomorphic French poodle that was modeled after the likeness of singer Helen Kane. An immediate success due to Betty's saucy look, it was only in 1932’s cartoon “Any Rags” that she transformed into a human. Her floppy ears became hoop earrings, and her black canine snout transitioned into skin-colored button nose. A cartoon that loved to sing and dance, she became recognized for her large child-like head, love of music and cute catch phrase
A compilation of scenes from early 30s Betty Boop cartoons, showcasing benchmarks of the Betty Boop series, including risque humor, Betty's singing performances, the emphasis on jazz music of the period for soundtracks, embodied by Cab Calloway among others, and the excellent animation including rotoscoped dancing and surrealist themes.

The Scandalous Story Behind The REAL Betty Boop Will Blow You Away

Created by cartoon animator Max Fleischer, Betty Boop became a cultural icon in the 1930s. A symbol of the bygone roaring twenties and all of its wonderful debauchery, the cartoon was a hit with adults and later with children, when she became more toned down.

More than the caricature of a flapper, Betty Boop represented a fully realized woman. Other female cartoons of the era like Minnie Mouse were almost replicas of their male counterparts with only a few details changed; the animations did not take on the human female form and were portrayed as childish. Betty on the other hand was sexually autonomous and outspoken against the old values asserted by her parents and the previous generations.

Nevertheless, after the infamous Hays Code forced morality restrictions on film, the sexual and psychological undertones of Miss Boop were almost entirely eliminated. The character was essentially relegated to a more demure career girl in later years, yet Betty Boop remained a household name for decades.

While the image of the busty, doe-eyed animation may be one of the nation’s most recognizable faces, most people couldn’t pick the original Betty Boop out of a lineup. So who inspired Max Fleischer’s runaway hit cartoon? Was it the quirky Helen Kane, who “boop-a-doop’ed” like Betty? Or perhaps the ‘30s it-girl Clara Bow, whose short hair and thin eye brows perfectly mimicked the flapper cartoon’s? Or maybe it was Baby Esther, the black jazz singer whose name has been long erased by history?

Well, we’ve got an answer, and it’s a little complicated…

Although many believe Helen Kane is the inspiration for Betty Boop, the character would not have been possible without 1920s jazz singer Esther Jones, aka Baby Esther.

Nicknamed after her “baby” singing style, Esther performed regularly at the famous Cotton Club in Harlem.

Esther was known for using phrases like “Boop-oop-a-doop” (which would later become a signature of the cartoon’s). Yet, while the Betty Boop creators have acknowledged that Baby Esther is the true original, most people credit Helen Kane. Why? Helen Kane went out of her way to take the credit.

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Everything You Never Knew About The Real Betty Boop

Jan 18, 2018

By Ossiana Tepfenhart

Betty Boop was the cartoon sex icon of the 1920s, 1930s, and beyond. Her coquettish stare, her large, pouty eyes, and her adorable songs won the hearts of millions across the nation. What most people don’t realize is that cartoon animator Max Fleischer didn’t get his idea for the cartoon starlet from thin air. The fact is that Betty Boop was based on a real person - and that her story is absolutely fascinating. Here’s the story of the flapper behind the cartoon icon, and why she was such a scandalous lady back in the day.You see, the thing is that Betty Boop was initially intended, by creator Max Fleischer, to be a caricature of Helen Kane — though he didn’t know at the time that Kane was merely a Baby Esther copycat.

Though most people won’t know Baby Esther’s name, her contribution to the arts is priceless. It’s strange to think that the original Betty Boop is so obscure that only one photo shows up on Google when you search her name. After all, she was the driving force behind one of pinup’s earliest cartoon icons. Helen Kane, eat your heart out!

The Forgotten Black Woman Behind Betty Boop

In her first cartoon in nearly three decades, which appeared online in February, Betty Boop steps out of a car into a windy street, her short black dress flaring. She rescues the designer Zac Posen — who is ensnared in monstrous vines — with nothing but a glare, and turns men arguing on the sidewalk into grinning fools with a wink and a smile. She’s sexy, independent — and well aware of both, something that has made her iconic since her debut as a character 87 years ago. “As a cartoonist, I consider Betty Boop the eighth wonder of the world,” Frank Caruso, the vice-president of comics and cartoons syndicate King Features, said in February when asked about the surreal new animated short, Betty Goes A-Posen, a three-part collaboration with the fashion designer. “When Max Fleischer dipped his pen into the inkwell,” Caruso continued, evoking the Viennese-American animator who created the legendary cartoon character, “out came a masterpiece that would influence generations of artists, animators, musicians, and fashion designers.”

The new cartoon is part of what Jennifer Wolfe of Animation World Network called “a larger Betty Boop campaign,” signaling that the character is experiencing a cultural resurgence. Last month, Posen also unveiled two new dresses inspired Betty Boop, one a flounce-hemmed mini ($250) and the other a floor-length mermaid gown ($550), both in Betty Boop Red; MAC Cosmetics released a sultry red lipstick on Valentine’s Day also named Betty Boop Red; the March issue of Woman’s Day features “Heroine of Hearts,” a comic by King Features starring Boop that promotes women’s health; and the famous flapper even stars in a new American play, Collective Rage: A Play in Five Boops, featuring five different versions of the Jazz Age character, the very title of which evokes her signature catchphrase, “Boop-oop-a-doop.” The play, which made its West Coast premiere in Pasadena’s Boston Court Theater in February and is running through March 19, focuses on gender and sexuality, but also evokes race, as one of the Betty Boops is black. Betty Boop, it seems, continues to dance across the stages of media, makeup, and memories alike. Yet behind her there’s a ghost, a figure who follows her everywhere, but who’s hardly ever seen: The all-too-often-forgotten African-American cabaret singer named “Baby” Esther who, arguably, truly gave birth to the cartoon character, yet rarely receives credit for it, and whose story, in many ways, tells a larger tale about America itself.

Betty Boop began as both a parody and a powerful symbol of unabashed sexuality, a combination she would retain, to varying degrees, throughout her lifespan in the media. She first appeared in 1930 as an anthropomorphic cartoon canine in the short Dizzy Dishes, where she sang, danced, and wagged her ears. A year later, she had transitioned into a human character, her flappy ears morphing into her now-famous hoop earrings. At once ingenuous, gentle, and kind, she was a female figure who stood out in the world of American animation and comics; whereas early characters like Minnie Mouse were often largely just copies of male figures in women’s clothing, Betty Boop was unique. Unlike Olive Oyl in “Popeye” or Minnie Mouse, she wasn’t defined by her relation to a more famous male character; she was the main figure all on her own. Over time, she became more and more of an overt sex symbol in black-and-white and color alike, her cleavage and curves clear for all to see.

On the one hand, Betty Boop was a creation of the heterosexual male gaze, with an endless parade of lecherous male characters trying to see under her skirt, yet on the other hand she wore power like a light shawl, her image an in-your-face depiction of unashamed sexuality. (Indeed, in Posen’s cartoon, she uses her sex appeal almost like a superpower, and Posen even called her “the ultimate femme fatale and feminist.”) She was a stereotype, yet she also defied stereotypes of what female cartoon characters could do onscreen. An early promotional ad describes her as “the first and only feminine cartoon star.” In two 1932 shorts, Betty Boop, long depicted as a virgin, even has to try to fend off grotesque male characters who try to rape her, which she is saved from by screaming for help; these were among the earliest cartoons to depict sexual harassment so explicitly. And she could be subversive in other ways, too: In one episode, she changes clothes onstage from a dress to a man’s suit, a transformation all the more striking because it subtly suggests a possible queer context for the character. However, her freedoms were short-lived. The National Legion of Decency — which was staunchly Catholic — and the Hays Code both appeared in the 1930s, and they defined and censored “objectionable content” in motion pictures; as a result, Betty Boop soon began wearing far less revealing clothing. As if proof that the character was largely a sex symbol, she fell off in popularity after this enforced modesty. But she was too potent an icon to disappear, and she kept reappearing, adorning everything from candy bars to a Tokyo diner and making a colorful cameo in a 2012 Lancôme commercial for Hypnôse Star mascara.

From the start, Betty Boop was modeled after multiple women. Fleischer created the character largely as a parody of the then-popular white singer, Helen Kane, but he also wished to evoke one of the most visible sex symbols of the Roaring ‘20s, the popular American actress Clara Bow. Squeaky yet coquettish, almost alien yet alluring, Kane’s voice was unforgettable, babyish in its extreme nasality and yet beautiful all the same, and it was almost impossible not to hear Kane in Betty Boop’s haunting, silly yet lovely singing. Kane, who had become famous by the time Fleischer’s parody came out for her scat-inspired line boop-oop-a-doop, even resembled her more than Bow. The first woman to voice Betty Boop was Margie Hines; several voice actresses later, Mae Questel, who would also go on to voice Olive Oyl, became Betty Boop’s best-known voice, even returning in 1988 to voice her in Who Framed Roger Rabbit. As if to cosmically drive the satire home, Questel had won a Helen Kane–look-alike contest in 1925. Perhaps no one saw the character’s resemblance to Helen Kane more than Helen Kane, though. She notoriously sued Fleischer Studios in 1932 for, Kane declared, stealing her singing style and catchphrase, which she claimed she’d invented. However, while Kane was indeed a model for Fleischer’s character, Betty Boop would not exist if not for Esther Jones.

Esther Jones sang in the 1920s, her beautiful, unusual voice a signature of the Cotton Club in Harlem. Boop-oop-a-doo, she would say as she performed in her flirtatious siren’s tone, her dark bob of hair fluttering. In a rare photo of Jones, she is smiling as she sits, her eyes penetrating and kind. Her voice and scat phrases sound strikingly like Kane’s and, in turn, Betty Boop’s. That was no coincidence. Kane had seen Jones perform in the Cotton Club in 1928; Jones’s manager Lou Walton revealed that he had coached Jones on how to scat, the type of singing popularized by black musicians and singers like Louis Armstrong, and Jones herself, Walton said, repurposed scat techniques into boop-oop-a-doo. In the lawsuit, Fleischer, along with all of Betty Boop’s voice actresses, testified that the flapper was, ultimately, not based off of Helen Kane but was rather a composite of many figures. The defense even brought out archival footage of Baby Esther singing, which had come from the earliest days of sound recording. It was the nail in Kane’s legal coffin. Baby Esther, it turned out, had invented Helen Kane, and, by extension, Betty Boop. Indeed, as jazz scholar Robert G. O’Meally wrote in the anthology Uptown Conversation: The New Jazz Studies, Betty Boop “had, as it were, a black grandmother in her background.” She, O’Meally added, “also had a black grandfather” in Armstrong.

However, Baby Esther had disappeared and was presumed dead by the time the court case was cleared in 1934, and Kane continued to be the face and name most associated with Betty Boop. Kane even briefly starred in a comic she herself had pitched called The Original Boop-Oop-a-Doop Girl after losing the lawsuit, the title of which further obscured Baby Esther. The popular Canadian YouTube-content producer WatchMojo was able to produce an entire piece on the history of Betty Boop in 2011 without once mentioning Jones. When Jones does get mentioned in mainstream sources, it’s often only in passing, as in The Definitive Betty Boop. And, regardless of Jones’s indirect influence, the cartoons of the 1930s that Betty Boop stars in are far from racially progressive. In perhaps the most extraordinary example, a 1932 cartoon begins with Louis Armstrong and his band providing the background music for Betty Boop’s trip into a jungle with her sidekicks, Bimbo and Koko the Clown; they are attacked by a tribe of black-skinned cannibals, who kidnap Betty Boop, and, in a particularly cringeworthy scene, Armstrong’s own face, giant against a dark sky, chases her beleaguered sidekicks, Armstrong’s visage morphing into an animated big-lipped caricature straight out of the iconography of minstrel shows. Of course, many early American cartoons contained such imagery; the origins of American animation, as several film critics have noted, are tied to blackface minstrelsy and vaudeville. (The critic Nicholas Sammond takes it a step further, arguing that characters like Mickey Mouse, Bimbo, and Koko actually are minstrels.) It’s telling, but unsurprising, that Fleischer was able to invoke Esther Jones as a legal defense against Kane in one breath and continue to produce such racial stereotypes in the next.

Perhaps it’s fitting that Betty Boop is best known in black and white. Her character itself is obviously white, yet would be inconceivable without black artistic tradition — and the same is true of America as a whole. Betty Boop is an indelible icon of the Jazz Age; jazz, which developed partly out of classical music, was created by African-American artists. In 1970 in Time magazine, responding to a peculiarly tone-deaf question from a reader who wanted to know what America would look like without black people, Ralph Ellison, the author of Invisible Man, argued that America would not, could not, be America without black people. The query was an “absurdity,” a “fantasy”; to varying degrees, Ellison declared, almost every aspect of the country — from slang to music to economic injustice to the existence of iconic American writers like Twain or Faulkner — is inextricably intertwined not only with the legacy of slavery but with African-American cultural production, yet these ties are all too often forgotten, if not deliberately obscured. That the white Kane took the black Jones’s style of singing and attempted to claim it as her own is one of the most common, frustrating narratives in America.

Silly as she can be, I love Betty Boop. That she’s still strutting her stuff in 2017, eyes as starry as ever, suggests she’s here to stay. In her way, after all, Betty Boop — with her confident sexuality, her innocence and experience, her contradictions, her interweaving racial history — is a symbol of America. Knowing the more complex story of her origins should only make Fleischer’s creation richer. I want to believe in an America where we can acknowledge our fraught racial pasts and still influence each other to create beautiful, disquieting art, no matter who we may be — a world where we never forget our phantoms, but learn from them, all the same. And this, to me, is why it’s only fitting Betty Boop reappear time and time again: She is us, in part. The next time she sings, we should listen not just for Kane, but for the ghost behind her, who should never have been a ghost in the first place.

The People v. Betty Boop

One after another, voice actors appeared before the judge. This was no ordinary courtroom testimony—they were there to squeak Betty Boop’s signature “boop-boop-a-doop.” It was 1934, and Betty Boop was on trial.

The cartoon vixen was an unlikely candidate for a lawsuit—and for popularity. She “was never intended to be a continuing character,” says animation historian Ray Pointer, author of The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer. In fact, the original 1932 version of Betty Boop, created by Fleischer Studios, wasn’t even human. Rather, she was a talking, singing French poodle with long, floppy ears.

But soon, Betty’s ears became earrings and she was reinvented as a human being. The new Betty Boop was a vivacious flapper who drove a car, did popular dances and showed plenty of skin. Her wide eyes and sexy looks were a hit with audiences—as was the fact that she was a clear parody of popular singer Helen Kane. The squeaky-voiced jazz singer was known for her sexy lyrics and baby-like singing, and Betty Boop delivered a spot-on imitation.

Kane’s delivery—including her signature “boop-boop-a-doop”—was “a theatrical staple going back years,” says Pointer. Like the vaudeville performers that preceded her, Kane used her little-girl voice to deliver lyrics that would have been shocking in the mouth of another singer.

The New York Times called her “the most menacing of the baby-talk ladies”—a reference to a vaudeville phenomenon also used by performers like Fanny Brice and Irene Franklin. Two years before Betty Boop’s debut, Kane had skyrocketed to fame with the song “That’s My Weakness Now,” which used the phrase “boop-boop-a-doop” as shorthand for sex.

Audiences would have recognized the send-up of Kane, now a Paramount star. But so did Kane herself—and when she experienced economic hardship due to a layoff, she took legal action against the animation studio. She sought $250,000 in damages and no further showings of Betty Boop cartoons—and claimed that phrases like “boop-boop-a-doop, boop-boopa doop, or boop-boopa-do, or boop-a-doop or similar combinations of such sounds or simply boop alone” were her own—part of what she called her “baby vamp” act.

But Max Fleischer, the animation pioneer who owned the studio, didn’t back down. He brought three women to court who had voiced Betty Boop—each of whom claimed they hadn’t imitated Kane and did their Betty Boop voices to prove it. The judge watched footage of Fleischer cartoons and Kane performances.

Eventually, says Pointer, “the court stenographer threw up his hands. Some of the testimony became almost hilarious.” The press had a field day with the concept of a performer attempting to protect her popular “boops.”

It seemed like Kane had a legitimate case—and her lawsuit made it all the way to the New York Supreme Court. But it stalled there, thanks to the origins of her signature sound. The Fleischers trotted out a number of witnesses who claimed they’d heard “boops” and baby talk in nightclubs, cabarets and vaudeville theaters before Kane became famous.

And then came talk of Baby Esther, the stage name of an African-American performer named Esther Jones. Baby Esther’s manager claimed that Kane and her manager had seen Jones perform in 1928, then copied her style. This was corroborated by Kane’s manager, says Pointer. Baby Esther herself was not available to testify, presumably because she was dead. But Fleischer Studios provided a screen test—now lost—of Jones that convinced the judge Kane had copied the singer.

To this day, there are no confirmed photos or recordings of Jones, and Jones herself never testified in the lawsuit. Nevertheless, says Pointer, “It was just so silly they wanted to get on with it,” bringing the lengthy lawsuit to a close without staging a widespread search for Jones. Kane lost the case, and Betty Boop kept on booping. A vindictive Max Fleischer even gathered his Betty Boop voice actors on camera to make fun of the lawsuit during a newsreel—and not long after, Betty Boop herself appeared in a cartoon called “Betty Boop’s Trial.”

As for Kane, she faded from popularity. When she died in 1966, the New York Times recalled her as a “once giggly, wiggly brunette”—and told the story of how she squandered her fortune on a failed clothing company.

A Boop-related lawsuit may have seemed silly, but it pointed to the outrageous popularity of Betty Boop. Her sexually suggestive dancing, squeaky voice and seductive costume, complete with garter, captivated audiences. Her songs were racy enough to raise eyebrows, but not explicit enough to make the cartoons unacceptable. “That’s why they were fun,” says Pointer. Even though she was given a more modest makeover after the passage of the Hays Code in 1934, she stayed popular until she was discontinued in 1939. The dog-turned-doll-like heroine has lived on through syndication and merchandising since television’s early days.

Though the flapper age was over by the time Betty Boop took to the screen, she was beloved by Depression-era audiences. “The public embraced her because [she] reminded them of the carefree days of the 1920s,” says Pointer. And as the most unique human woman cartoon character of her day, she became a fan favorite.

For Pointer, she’s important for another reason: her music. “The cartoons helped to promote and expose the public to jazz and swing,” he recalls. And Betty Boop’s cartoons help preserve America’s long-gone vaudeville tradition—one that was based, in large part, on the contributions of unacknowledged African-American performers.