Some of you will remember Betty Boop's sexy cartoon created by Fleischer Bros in 1929 to allow the Depression days Americans to survive the hard times.
She had a flesh and bones model, Helen Kane, a tiny sex-bomb 157 cm tall who was hired by Ben Ash and after singing at Paramount Theater in Madison Square, NYC That's my Weakness Now with... you'd bet it?!? - some cool scat i.e. Boop-oop-a-doop - she got an USD 5,000 weekly wage... 1929, Depression Days' U.S. Dollars!!!
Helen was the human copy of Betty Boop: same childish voice in a sexy mignon sized lady... when she tried to obtain some legal acknowledgment and merit from Max Fleischer himself, back in 1932, asking for an hefty USD 250,000 at the Court, Paramount and its lawyers quoted a Clara Bow's Hollywood star, similar looking, and Baby Esther who used same (childish) singing at Cotton Club.
Furthermore, she was the singer who launched - in 1928 - that song, I wanna Be Loved by You, which the world, myself included, guessed it was by Marilyn Monroe.
Both Betty Boop and Helen Kane had an unfortunate life ending: Helen, after owning and managing a restaurant in NYC - the Healy's Grill - with her former third husband, Dan Healy, died of a cancer at 62; Betty, thanking Hays' morality and decency control laws, was changed her joyful and playful character in 1939 and, after overdressing her in house-maid heavy clothes, she was retired by Paramount as the end of an era of hungriness and dancing, when everybody, men and women, were wearing hats!
The WWII wasn't that far... and Marilyn wasn't that luckier, later on.
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