![]() However, Fleischer Studios did use the likeness of Helen Kane to create Betty Boop. Most people believe that Helen Kane being the inspiration for Betty Boop was half true. Helen was a professional singer and actress who was known for her song “I Wanna Be Loved By You” released in 1928. Then, Helen Kane was thought to be the biggest inspiration for Betty Boop and was often credited. If Betty Boop was the caricature of the 1920s “It Girl”, Clara Bow was that 1920s “It Girl”. Plus, people often compared Clara with Betty and the fact was that both women rose to fame than anything else. Although Clara shares many similarities with Betty but back in the day many people were off the view that she was not the perfect choice for the role. So, Clara Bow was also a silent actress who successfully transitioned to talking movies in the 1930s. At the time, the movies were mostly silent. Who Was the Real Betty Boop?Ĭlara Bow is amongst many women who were credited for being an inspiration for Betty Boop. ![]() However, there is a lot more to discuss about the iconic character that the world needs to know. Originally, Betty Boop was intended to be a dog but it was in 1923 that she received a makeover and turned into the Betty Boop we know of today. ![]() The character was created by Fleischer and Paramount Studios. It was in the early 1930s that she made her first appearance in a talking cartoon called “Dizzy Dishes”. Her 1920s exaggerated flapper style and baby doll voice along with silly adventures made her a popular character for years to come. Unlike today’s “sexy babies,” Betty Boop never expects the world to coddle her.Betty Boop is one of the most recognized faces in the world. And her tenement trill creates a lovely counterpoint to the sophisticated jazz that the Fleischers often used, some by the likes of Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong. But there’s hard-earned spunk in that childish octave, a good-hearted New York toughness that puts her in a movie lineage defined by Clara Bow and Barbara Stanwyck. It’s a girlish voice, to be sure, somewhere between a chirp and a squawk. ![]() She also had the honors when Betty came out of retirement to cameo in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” (Claiming that they’d unfairly caricatured her image, the singer-actress brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against Max Fleischer and Paramount, which released the Boop films.)Ī number of performers have provided Betty’s voice, but Mae Questel, the originator, did so more often than any other. Betty Boop wasn’t the first to affect girlish tones, but in her pop-culture visibility she surpassed such real-life predecessors as Helen Kane, who served as a model. She’s a city-bred woman of the people when she runs for president, her opponent is, by contrast, a hat-wearing stick figure named Mr. There’s no sense of entitlement about Betty, who’s at ease mixing it up with all types. In the early short “Minnie the Moocher,” not included in the Olive package, what at first appears to be a yarmulke on her father’s head might instead by a bald spot.īut she is definitely the child of European immigrants, like Max Fleischer, who was a toddler when his family moved from Galicia to New York. Betty herself might be Jewish, although the Fleischers left this matter ambiguous. A number of handy creature-appliances prefigure the Stone Age innovations of “The Flintstones.”Īlong with pop-culture references (Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Maurice Chevalier), the scripts are lightly peppered with Yiddish. Rube Goldberg-isms pop up, and mechanical things sprout hands and legs when needed, as when a boat climbs down a waterfall. Betty Boop shorts exemplify his studio’s deft mix of playfulness and surrealism, stripped-down simplicity and loose-limbed exuberance. A seminal figure in animation, Max Fleischer invented Rotoscoping, a technique for frame-by-frame tracing of live-action footage.
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