Esther Jones: The Real Betty Boop

We all know Betty Boop, she of the rocking curves and teeny tiny dress; she of the close cropped curls and high, babyish voice. Everyone can practically hear her coo her signature phrase: "Boop-oop-a-doop!" Where did she come from, besides the inventive mind of one of America's most well known cartoonists, Max Fleischer? Actually, her story has roots in black history, a fitting thing for this month of February. However, intermingled with this story is a bit of appropriation and eventually the fading knowledge of her true origins.

Enter, Esther Jones.

Esther Jones was born sometime in the early 1900s. Not too much is known about her early life before she became a jazz singer. Despite the fame she'd come into later in life, she was never offered the privilege of telling her story. What is known is that she had a manager, Lou Walton, who saw potential in that young girl and got her a starting gig at the Cotton Club in Harlem in the late 1920s. The name might be familiar to you, as it was a very popular club in the twenties and still holds some infamy throughout time. Esther quickly became a regular act, and quite popular too, due to her original singing style. Esther caught on quickly to the musical style of scat singing, vocal improvisations of nonsense syllables, which was quite popular at the time. She would mix vocalizations using "boo-boo-boo" and "doo-doo-doo" to create some-thing that many noticed resembled a baby's coo. The Club and her fans thereafter dubbed her as "Baby Esther" for singing in a babyish voice.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Now here is where the story gets a little messy.

You may or may not know this name. Helen Kane was a white jazz singer working at around the same time as Baby Esther. Some time in 1928, most notably after she was seen attending Esther's cabaret act, Helen started adding Esther's act into her own. She would mimic the singing style and scat vocalizations of Esther with a twist to not make the copying as noticeable. Helen would use "boop-oop-a-doop" instead of the "boo" and "doo" that Esther used. The phrase was used in her 1928 hit, "I Wanna Be Loved By You."

Now I know that definitely sounds familiar to you. Yes, the very same "boop-oop-a-doop" used by Betty!

But wait, there's more: Max Fleischer introduced Betty Boop on August 9th, 1930. At first the girl was drawn as a dog with two floppy ears. Eventually after her popularity grew she was redesigned to be a beautiful young flapper girl, with the two dog ears becoming hoop earrings to further her scandalous im-age. In 1932, Kane filed a lawsuit against Max Fleischer. The complaint? That Betty Boop was imitat-ingher and profiting off her image!

The . . . audacity. The unbelievable nerve.

They took it to court, where Kane demanded $250,000 from Fleischer Studios, and the legal battle lasted for two long years. Now it is not clear whether the defense had already known Kane wasn't the true originator of the scat style, or if they had found out through some nifty detective work, but eventually the legal team got a hold of Lou Walton to testify whether or not it was Kane who had been imitated. Lou Wal-ton, of course being Esther's manager, was very quick to shut down the notion that Kane had any right to complain about imitations.

He told the New York state Supreme Court that he had been the one to teach Esther Jones, a regular at the Cotton Club, about the scat style of singing. He even had a sound film to offer as proof of Esther prac-ticing those vocals and syllables years before Kane ever thought to steal it. Kane had to sit in that court-room, having been proven a fraud and a cheat at the height of her career before every legal employee and reporter that filled that room.

It might have crossed your mind to ask why they hadn't asked for Esther to testify in court as well as her manager. Unfortunately for Esther, she didn't live long enough to see the conclusion of the legal battle, passing away in 1934. Esther would never get the chance to confront Kane about the theft of her personal style, nor would she get to talk about the similarities she saw in Betty Boop. Perhaps Betty shares more of a physical resemblance with Kane, and she may have coined the phrase "boop-oop-a-doop"—but appro-priation does not equal causation. Kane cannot take credit for a style she never created, which is why so many who learn of Baby Esther's story consider her to be the true Godmother of sweet little Betty Boop.

By Danny Fantom

From: United States

Website: https://vocal.media/authors/danny-fantom

Twitter: ThrillandFear