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And as the most unique human woman cartoon character of her day, she became a fan favorite. In the cartoon “Hot Dog,” released on March 29, 1930, in which Bimbo starred and in which Betty did not appear, Bimbo was shown out driving and trying to pick up women walking on the sidewalk. At the time, “hot dog” was slang for “attractive woman.” Appropriately enough, considering this quest of Bimbo’s, his name had two different meanings at the beginning of his cartoon career. When he was first dubbed “Bimbo,” that word meant a tough guy, or a criminal. Soon after Bimbo’s character began appearing on the screen, however, “bimbo” came to mean a promiscuous female. Whether or not this shift in meaning was partly prodded by Bimbo’s relentless on-screen pursuits, it underscored his interest in women.
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To create the capsule, Guess Originals worked with Fleischer Studios, Inc., the American animation studio that created Betty Boop. Writer Bob Martin also admits the musical bears some resemblance, coincidentally, to Barbie. Madonna flirted with the look a billion times, but she even had her own Boop-ish cartoon drawn for the opener of the her 1987 movie, “Who’s That Girl”.
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Due to a combination of policies affected by the Production Code and also changes in the content of Paramount’s films also affected Betty’s later appearances. While her later cartoons were more slick and consistently produced, they relied heavily on self-consciously cute and moralistic preaching, making Betty more of a “good citizen” maiden aunt spinster separated from any references to sexuality, and innocent girlishness. Oddly, Betty became a secondary character in her own cartoons, which began to center on the adventures of her pet dog, Pudgy, and the eccentric inventor, Grampy, who bore an interesting resemblance to Koko the Clown. 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.
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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. 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.
In the 1920s — and beyond — it was quite common for white performers to steal the acts of their Black counterparts without credit or compensation. But, whereas the Black performers of today can rally people to their cause using the power of social media, Black performers of yester-year — like Esther Jones — weren’t quite as lucky. “When Walton produced a sound film featuring Baby Esther practicing in her baby voice and “scatting” as proof, Kane, at the height of her career, was exposed as a fraud and lost the case. Headline-making scandals in 1920s Hollywood had led to intense public scrutiny of the industry, with a slew of states enacting film censorship laws. Moviemakers decided they needed a trade organization to help protect their interests; in 1927, the resulting Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) created a list of “Don’ts” and “Be-Carefuls” for films to adhere to in order to avoid further censorship. That list served as the framework for the 1930 Motion Picture Production Code (commonly known as the Hays Code after MPPDA president Will H. Hays), which outlined how to approach subjects like sex, dancing, drugs, vulgarity and crime.
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As History reports, "the press had a field day with the concept of a performer attempting to protect her popular 'boops.'" The Fleischers were not impressed and fought back. Besides testimony from the women who had voiced Boop for the cartoons, other performers testified as well. Fleischer Studios was on the cutting edge of sound as well as animation, and their Betty cartoons featured many leading vocalists and musicians of the time, including Ethel Merman, Rudy Vallee, and Don Redman. Fleischer particularly tapped in to jazz, and Betty performed alongside jazz legends like Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong. 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.
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In the film, she was depicted with red hair as opposed to her typical black hair. The collection took inspiration from Betty Boop’s flapper look and the brand’s casual-wear aesthetic. Betty Boop appeared in two television specials, “The Romance of Betty Boop” (1984) and “The Betty Boop Movie Mystery” (1989), as well as cameo appearances in television commercials. And while television revivals were conceived, nothing materialized to the degree originally planned. Betty Boop made her first appearance on August 9, 1930 in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, the sixth installment in Fleischer’s Talkartoon series.
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Baby Esther herself was not available to testify, but Fleischer Studios provided a screen test—now lost—of Jones that convinced the judge Kane had copied the singer. Once in court, Bimbo escapes a penalty by producing a banjo out of nowhere, dancing a few steps, and singing portions of “St. Louis Blues.” The song, strictly speaking, is unrelated to the offense for which Bimbo’s been arrested, but he obviously hopes to gain the court’s sympathy by singing it as part of his defense. (The Fleischers apparently thought “St. Louis Blues” would be particularly appropriate to this cartoon because it deals with unrequited love.) The male judge and the all-male jury listen intently, and then dance to Bimbo’s performance. In the “Hot Dog” cartoon, Bimbo soon focuses on one female he thinks might be attractive.
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And Jones’s performance inspired Kane to incorporate it into her own act — an act that would forever be immortalized in the Betty Boop cartoons. And, despite her relationship to the internationally-known character, Jones’s life — and death — remain shrouded in mystery. In fact, few recordings of her work remain, and what little is known about her came out in a lawsuit that exposed the real Betty Boop’s true origins once and for all.
The Musical, she’s stepping from her cartoon world into life as we live it today. 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.
By the summer of 1933, Betty Boop was ready to use her star power to introduce fresh talent. Before our favorite spinach-eating sailor had his own series, Popeye performed a choreographed hula dance alongside a scantily-clad Betty. Popeye the Sailor’s catchy theme song (and his good company) made him an instant success.
Betty Boop was dreamed up by Max Fleischer, a major pioneer in the creative and technical development of animated films, and originally drawn by Grim Natwick . Fleisher's 1915 invention, the Rotoscope, introduced a technique in which animators traced over filmed action, creating life-like movement that changed cartoons forever. By the end of the Roaring Twenties, Fleischer’s invention could perfectly capture every bounce and flounce of his flapper-style sweetheart, Betty Boop.
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