This sepia-toned portrait of Helen Kane, the Boop-a-Doop Girl from the book Stars of the Photoplay, a book of photo portraits of the Hollywood stars (Photoplay Publishing Co., 1930), recalls the heady days of the glorious wide-eyed flappers with their spit curls and sexual suggestiveness expressed through a gauze of pretended innocence.
The year 1930 also brought the first appearance of her cartoon alter ego, Betty Boop. We've discussed Betty's influence on pop culture in this previous post. Miss Kane would sue cartoonist/animator Max Fleischer over his creation stealing her "boop-a-doop" line. She did not win her case.
Helen Kane's career would lose its momentum partly due to the Great Depression and the end of the flapper era, and due to all those impersonators, cartoon or human, who made boop-a-dooping a flood on the market, and the originator was no longer so original.
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Jacqueline T. Lynch is the author of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. and Movies in Our Time - Hollywood Mirrors and Mimics the Twentieth Century and Hollywood Fights Fascism. Her latest book is Christmas in Classic Films. TO JOIN HER READERS' GROUP - follow this link for a free book as a thank-you for joining.
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