Helen Kane

Helen Kane, born Helen Clare Schroeder on August 4, 1904, in the Bronx, New York, was an American singer and actress whose Broadway career spanned from 1927 to 1933. She was the youngest of three children born to Louis Schroeder, a German immigrant who worked intermittently as a wagon driver, and Ellen Dixon Schroeder, an Irish immigrant who worked in a laundry. Kane attended St. Anselm's Parochial School in the Bronx, where her mother paid three dollars — roughly a day's wages — for a costume for her daughter's first theatrical role in a school production.

By age fifteen, Kane had entered professional performance, touring the Orpheum Circuit alongside the Marx Brothers in On the Balcony. During the early 1920s she worked in vaudeville as both a singer and kickline dancer, appearing in an engagement billed as the "All Jazz Revue." She performed at the New York Palace for the first time in 1921 and was associated with Stars of the Future from 1922 to 1924, with a brief revival in early 1927. During this period she also sang with a trio act called the Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce, later known as The Three X Sisters. Her roommate at the time was Jessie Fordyce, and the trio might have been billed as the Hamilton Sisters and Schroeder had Pearl Hamilton not chosen Fordyce to tour at the close of that theatrical season.

Kane's Broadway career began in earnest in 1927 with the revue A Night in Spain, which ran from May 3 through November 12 of that year for 174 performances at the 44th Street Theatre. Following that engagement, band conductor Paul Ash recommended Kane for a performance at the Paramount Theater in Times Square. During that appearance she was singing "That's My Weakness Now" when she interpolated the scat phrase "boop-oop-a-doop," a moment that connected with flapper culture and rapidly elevated her public profile. Within four days her name was in lights.

Her next Broadway credit was the 1928 musical Good Boy, in which she introduced the song "I Wanna Be Loved by You," written for the production by the songwriting team Kalmar and Ruby. The song became her signature number. She subsequently returned to the Palace as a headliner earning five thousand dollars a week. Her third Broadway credit was the musical Shady Lady.

Kane recorded 22 songs between 1928 and 1930. In early 1929, Paramount Pictures signed her to a series of film musicals at a salary of as much as eight thousand dollars a week. Her films included Nothing But the Truth, Sweetie, Pointed Heels, Paramount on Parade, Dangerous Nan McGrew, Heads Up, and the short A Lesson in Love. Although she received top billing only on Dangerous Nan McGrew, her popularity was such that her name appeared above the title on the marquee when Sweetie premiered at the New York Paramount, despite Nancy Carroll being the film's lead. She received equal billing with Buddy Rogers in Heads Up and shared a billing line with William Powell in Pointed Heels. She also recorded four songs for a 1954 MGM extended-play release titled "The Boop Boop a Doop Girl," and after 1930 recorded four additional sides for Columbia Records along with a soundtrack single of "I Wanna Be Loved by You" for the film Three Little Words.

In 1930, Fleischer Studios introduced an animated character in the Talkartoons short Dizzy Dishes who was widely believed to be a caricature of Kane, featuring a squeaky singing voice and droopy dog ears. The character was later named Betty Boop and given her own series of cartoons, with the dog ears redesigned as hoop earrings in 1932. Cartoonist Grim Natwick admitted before his death that he had based the character's design on a photograph of Kane. The five women who provided Betty Boop's voice — Margie Hines, Mae Questel, Bonnie Poe, Little Ann Little, and Kate Wright — had all participated in a 1929 Paramount contest that was explicitly a search for Helen Kane impersonators.

In May 1932, Kane filed a lawsuit against Max Fleischer and Paramount seeking two hundred fifty thousand dollars in damages, alleging infringement, unfair competition, and exploitation of her personality and image. The trial took place over approximately two weeks in April and May 1934. The defense argued that Kane had derived her style from Baby Esther, a child African American entertainer of the late 1920s known for impersonating Florence Mills, who had performed at a New York nightclub called The Everglades in mid-1928. Theatrical manager Lou Bolton testified that Kane had adopted Baby Esther's vocal style, though under cross-examination he acknowledged he could not confirm when Kane had entered the club on the night in question. It was also disclosed that Fleischer's lawyers had paid Bolton two hundred dollars to travel to New York. The Fleischers presented a 1928 film of Baby Esther singing songs previously associated with Kane, though scholar Mark Langer noted this was not strong evidence that Kane had derived her style from Esther. Jazz studies scholar Robert O'Meally later suggested the film evidence may have been fabricated by the Fleischers, who subsequently admitted Kane had been their model for Betty Boop. The judge found the evidence insufficient to support Kane's claims and dismissed the case. Helen Kane died on September 26, 1966.