Helen Kane


Helen Kane was an American singer and actress. Her signature song was "I Wanna Be Loved by You", featured in the musical film "Good Boy". Kane's voice and appearance were a source for Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick when creating Betty Boop. Kane attempted to sue the studio for claims of stealing her signature "boop-a-doop" style. However, it was revealed that Kane copied that style from Harlem jazz singer Baby Esther leading to the case's dismissal.

Early life

Kane attended St. Anselm's Parochial School in the Bronx. She was the youngest of three children. Her father, Louis Schroeder, the son of a German immigrant, was employed intermittently; her Irish immigrant mother, Ellen Schroeder, worked in a laundry.
Kane's mother reluctantly paid $3 for her daughter's costume as a queen in Kane's first theatrical role at school. By the time she was 15 years old, Kane was onstage professionally, touring the Orpheum Circuit with the Marx Brothers in On the Balcony.
She spent the early 1920s trouping in vaudeville as a singer and kickline dancer with a theater engagement called the "All Jazz Revue". She played the New York Palace for the first time in 1921. Her Broadway days started there as well with the Stars of the Future. She also sang onstage with an early singing trio, the Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce, later known as The Three X Sisters.
Kane's roommate in the early 1920s was Jessie Fordyce. The singing trio act might have become the Hamilton Sisters and Schroeder; however, Pearl Hamilton chose Fordyce to tour as a trio act "just to see what happens" at the end of the theatrical season.

Music

Kane's career break came in 1927, when she appeared in a musical called A Night in Spain. It ran from May 3, 1927, through Nov 12, 1927, for a total of 174 performances, at the 44th Street Theatre in NYC. Subsequently, Paul Ash, a band conductor, put Kane's name forward for a performance at New York's Paramount Theater.
Kane's first performance at the Paramount Theater in Times Square proved to be her career's launching point. She was singing "That's My Weakness Now", when she interpolated the scat lyrics "boop-boop-a-doop". This resonated with the flapper culture, and four days later, Helen Kane's name went up in lights.
Oscar Hammerstein's 1928 show Good Boy was where she first introduced the hit "I Wanna Be Loved by You". Then it was back to the Palace, as a headliner for $5,000 a week. She rejoined her friends from vaudeville, The Three X Sisters for one night. In a 1935 live stage performance, she harmonized with their unique banter to a novelty tune, "The Preacher and the Bear".
Kane had excellent diction, intonation, and timing, learned during her apprenticeship in vaudeville. Her songs have a strong word focus and capitalize on her coquettish voice. She blended several fashionable styles of the late 1920s. These included scat singing, a kind of vocal improvisation, and also blending singing and speech. Sprechgesang was fashionable at this time in Germany's Weimar Republic in both nightclubs and in serious music.
Kane recorded 22 songs between 1928 and 1930. After 1930 and up to 1951, she recorded four sides for Columbia Records in addition to the "Three Little Words" soundtrack single recording of "I Wanna Be Loved by You".
She also recorded four songs that comprise a 1954 MGM 45Ep entitled "The Boop Boop a Doop Girl".

Films

In mid-1929, Paramount Pictures signed Kane to make a series of musicals at a salary of as much as $8,000 a week.
Her films were:
Although Helen was not the "star" of most of her pictures she was so popular that in the case of Sweetie, her name appeared over the title on the marquee when the movie premiered at the New York Paramount. Helen provided all the fun and she and Jack Oakie danced to "The Prep Step", a big hit along with "He's So Unusual". They even performed this dance at the very first Hollywood Bowl fundraiser in 1929. Another hit from this picture was Nancy Carroll's "My Sweeter Than Sweet".
In the opening credits of Pointed Heels, Helen and William Powell are billed on the same line just below the title, with Fay Wray and the rest in smaller letters underneath. She had equal billing with Buddy Rogers in Heads Up! and it is their faces which appeared in all the ads. And in Dangerous Nan McGrew, Helen received top billing in the film's credits.

''Kane v. Fleischer''

In 1930, Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick introduced what was alleged to be a caricature of Helen Kane, with droopy dog ears and a squeaky singing voice, in the Talkartoons cartoon Dizzy Dishes. "Betty Boop", as the character was later dubbed, soon became popular and the star of her own cartoons. In 1932, Betty Boop was changed into a human, the long dog ears becoming hoop earrings.
In 1932, Kane filed a $250,000 infringement lawsuit against Max Fleischer and Paramount for unfair competition and exploitation of her personality and image. Before his death, cartoonist Grim Natwick admitted he had designed a young girl based upon a photo of Kane. Margie Hines, Mae Questel, Bonnie Poe, Little Ann Little, and Kate Wright provided the voice for Betty Boop. They had all taken part in a 1929 Paramount contest, which was a search for Helen Kane impersonators.
It was later proven in court that Kane based her style in part on Baby Esther, an African American singer and entertainer of the late 1920s who was known for her "baby" singing style. Baby Esther performed regularly at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and theatrical manager Lou Walton testified during the Kane v. Fleischer trial that Helen Kane saw Baby Esther's cabaret act in 1928 with him and appropriated Jones' style of singing, changing the interpolated words "boo-boo-boo" and "doo-doo-doo" to "boop-boop-a-doop" in a recording of "I Wanna Be Loved By You". Kane never publicly admitted this.
Testimony was offered in court to convey the impression that Helen Kane adopted Baby Esther's boops to further her own popularity as a singer. Baby Esther made funny expressions and interpolated meaningless sounds at the end of each bar of music in her songs. Kane was nevertheless known as the "Boop" girl. In April 1928 Miss Kane and her manager attended a performance of Baby Esther in a New York night club and just a few weeks later began to "boop" at a theatre. When Kane attempted to sue Fleischer Studios for using her persona, the studios defended themselves by arguing that Kane herself had taken it from "Baby Esther" Jones. An early test sound film of Baby Esther's performance was used as evidence.

Later years

With the hardships of the Great Depression biting, the flamboyant world of the flapper was over, and Kane's style began to date rapidly. After 1931 she lost the favor of the moviemakers, who chose other singers for their films. She appeared in a stage production called Culture Vulture in 1933, and made appearances at various nightclubs and theatres during the 1930s.
In 1950 she dubbed Debbie Reynolds, who performed "I Wanna Be Loved By You" in the MGM musical biopic of songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, Three Little Words. She did not appear in the film's credits.
She appeared on several TV shows in the 1950s and 1960s, principally Toast of the Town, later known as The Ed Sullivan Show. Kane's final public appearance was on the Sullivan Show on St. Patrick's Day 1965.
In addition, she was given overdue tribute in 1958, on This is Your Life with Ralph Edwards. It brought a tearful reunion with Helen's old friend, actress Fifi D'Orsay, and a lifelong fan who once sent her money when she was down on her luck. Renewed interest in Helen brought her a one-record contract with MGM Records and appearances on I've Got a Secret and You Asked for It. She sang on all of these TV shows.

Personal life

In November 1924, Helen Schroeder married department store buyer Joseph Kane and took his last name professionally. The marriage was over by 1925, ended in 1928, and Helen went to Mexico to get a final divorce in December 1932. In February 1933 she married actor and son of Gertrude Hoffmann Max Hoffmann Jr. After six months he deserted her and Helen filed for divorce. The divorce was finalized in May 1935. In 1939 she married Dan Healy, with whom she had worked in Good Boy in 1928. They opened a restaurant in New York City called Healy's Grill. She remained married to Healy for the rest of her life.

Death

Helen Kane battled breast cancer for more than a decade. She had surgery in 1956 and eventually received two hundred radiation treatments as an outpatient at Memorial Hospital. She died on September 26, 1966, at age 62, in her apartment in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York City. Her husband of 27 years, Dan Healy, was at her bedside. Helen Kane was buried in Long Island National Cemetery, in Suffolk County, New York.

Discography

The release dates of recordings 1 to 22 are derived from the cover notes of the CD Helen Kane - Great Original Performances - 1928 to 1930.
In 1954, MGM records issued the last Helen Kane recordings as a 45-rpm Ep X1164 called "The Boop-Boop-A-Doop Girl!", orchestra directed by Leroy Holmes, and the songs are "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street", "When I Get You Alone Tonight, Do Something" and "That's My Weakness Now".