Inspired by a popular performing style, but not by any one specific person, the character was originally created as an anthropomorphic French poodle. Thus, it does not come as a surprise that Esther Jones did not file suit against Kane or Max Fleischer, where she would have had the burden of proving her case against a white man or white woman. History Origins Betty Boop made her first appearance in the cartoon Dizzy Dishes, released on August 9, 1930, the seventh installment in Fleischer's Talkartoon series. White singers have a long history of getting away with appropriating black music throughout the 20th century without legally crediting, acknowledging, or paying African American artists. “When Walton produced a sound film featuring Baby Esther practicing in her baby voice and “scatting” as proof, Kane, at the height of her career, was exposed as a fraud and lost the case. He added that he saw Baby Esther’s acts with Kane before the white singer started her ‘booping.’ Walton said he taught Esther how to merge the scat lyrics “boo-boo-boo” and “doo-doo-doo,” and use them in her uptown performances. '(Mae Questal) was only 17 when she won a contest to find a look-alike for Helen Kane, a singer then known as the boop-oop-a-doop queen. “Before a judge in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, the defense called Jones’ manager, Lou Walton, to testify. I suppose I used a French poodle for the basic idea of the character.' -Grim Natwick, creator of Betty Boop and Snow White, on his inspiration for creating Betty Boop. “In 1932, Kane filed a $250,000 lawsuit against Max Fleischer and the film company Paramount Publix Corp., contending that they had exploited her persona and asserting she had invented the phrase, ‘Boop-oop-a-doop,’ most famously heard in her 1928 hit song, ‘I Wanna Be Loved By You.’
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