![]() ![]() It was that year that Helen had had enough, & brought a quarter million dollar suit against Paramount of the Fleischers over the misappropriation of her entire act. ![]() At that time thecaricature of was Kane rendered as a cute doggy, & for a couple cartoons thereafter Betty had dropping dog-ears, startling to see now since there's no explanation of the ears.Įven after Bimbo became her pet dog instead of her lover dog, a weird sexual tension existed between them, for just as it took a while to realize Betty didn't need the lolling ears, so too it took a while to change the direction of her being half a doggy couple.īy 1932 in films like Mysterious Mose the Betty Boop everyone remembers was in full jazzy sway. In 1930 Betty appeared in her first cartoon Dizzy Dishes as a the girlfriend of Bimbo. The 22 recordings she made from 1928 to 1930 defined flapper music, but after 1930 her career faded in great part because people began to think she was a Betty Boop impersonator. But her regional fame could not compete with the nationwide distribution of Betty Boop cartoons in every small-town theater. In 1928 she was earning more than $5,500 a week for live performances & was all the rage in New York. Her biggest hit was "I Want to be Loved By You," which Betty would one day sing as well. Petite Helen (1903-1966), shown here at the left, at only five feet height was the flapper who invented "boop-oop-a-doop." She had short curly hair, enormous eyes, a round face & ever so slightly chubby figure, making her easily imitated or caricatured. Tragically for Helen Kane, the cartoon voice would in short order obliterate the original from public awareness. But she could get away with being a cartoon voice because cartoons very commonly caricatured celebrities. Because she was an imitation, Mae never really had a recording career of her own (apart from a novelty hit in which she sounded like a child singing "Good Ship Lollipop" which sold a great many copies). Mae had been in vaudeville since she was a teenager, where Max Fleischer first saw her when she was doing a Helen Kane impersonation. Her last public outing as the voice of Betty was in old age, as she could still do the Bronxy baby voice in 1988 for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, where Betty is shown in reduced circumstances, working as a cocktail waitress because there's just no work anymore for black & white characters. She continued to be Olive long after Betty's heyday ended, & extended her voice work to Little Lulu, Little Audrey & Casper the Friendly Ghost. She also voiced Olive Oyl, which is obvious only after you know it. She also sang in the very first Betty cartoon in 1930, but did not voice Betty regularly until 1932. Betty Boop's Origins, 1930 Mae Questel (1908-1998), shown here at the right, provided the voice of Betty Boop exclusively from at least 1932 to 1939. ![]()
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