According to court documents, the Fleischer Studio originally assigned its rights to Betty Boop to Paramount Pictures on July 11, 1941. Paramount assigned those rights to Harvey Films, Inc on June 27th, 1958. Harvey actively licensed the character in the early 1960s.
A trademark on the name (but not legitimately the likeness) of Betty Boop is owned by Fleischer Studios, for which the character was created in the 1930s, but which was unable to claim copyright infringement in a 2008 district court case; the merchandising rights to Betty's name were licensed to King Features Syndicate ...
The Betty Boop cartoon this image is taken from House Cleaning Blues (1937) which is in the public domain because the copyright was not renewed by the copyright owners.
By 1932 she was starring in her own series of Betty Boop cartoons, produced by Fleischer. That year, Helen Kane, a popular jazz performer, sued Fleischer and Paramount Pictures, then known as Paramount Publix Corp., claiming Betty Boop was a “deliberate caricature” of her “baby vamp” persona.
The Betty Boop character is a Fleischer trademark. But–Betty Boop 1930s movie posters were not copyrighted (or not renewed?) as standalone items, so are public domain. Fleischer tried to use its active trademark on the character to stop a third party's use of the ancient PD art. Judge said this was a no-go.
Boop was originally voiced by actress Margie Hines and later by Mae Questel, a Jewish actress from the Bronx and Boop lookalike. It was Questel who gave Boop her distinctive sound, tinged with a New York accent.
Esther Lee "Baby Esther" Jones, a Black Chicago woman and well-known singer of the 1920s, is the initial inspiration for the cartoon character, Betty Boop, who first appeared in the 1930s. Jones' musical compositions fell under the growing Jazz community.
Betty Boop was based on Helen Kane, an American actress, and singer. Kane, however, had stolen her routine and look from Esther Lee Jones, more famously known as Baby Esther. Baby Esther was a Black singer from Chicago and was never officially recognized as the real inspiration for Betty Boop.
A Harlem club singer named Esther Jones, a.k.a. Baby Esther, came up with that line and was the inspiration behind the cartoon. Another way to tell this story? Esther Jones was a black woman who lost something she created to a lighter-complexioned star.
He's public domain. Popeye's image now belongs to the world. There are no longer royalties to pay because his creator, Elzie Segar, died in 1939, and in much of the world, copyright expires 70 years after the creator's death.
Fantasmagorie is considered to be the oldest cartoon in the world. The very short animation is one of the earliest examples of traditional hand-drawn animation. It was created in 1908 by French cartoonist Émile Cohl.
Look, we all wish we were married to Betty Boop, but only one man had the guts to do it. That man is Alec Robbins, and luckily we can vicariously live through him by reading Mr. Boop, the chronicle of his very real, very legal marriage to 1931's favorite square-headed sex symbol.
When deciding if Betty Boop is black, remember that in her black-and-white cartoons, she was usually shown with white skin. In the only color Fleisher video of Betty Boop, she has light skin and red hair. But that does not mean she's not black. Malcolm X had light skin and red hair.
Betty Boop is forever connected with the phrase Boop-Oop-a-Doop. The phrase, or some version of it, has been a part of Betty since her very first appearance in Dizzy Dishes.
Betty Boop's exact weight and body type varies from chubby to skinny depending on the artist or animator with the only remaining consistency typically being that she is curvy. It seems that the person she was originally a parody of, Helen Kane, was considered to be “plump.”
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.
Then there's this cultural appropriation situation: Betty's signature flapper look and squeaky sound were based on Helen Kane, a popular white singer famous for her 1938 smash hit, "I Wanna be Loved by You." The only snag? Helen Kane had swiped her “Boop-Oop-a-Doop” from Baby Esther, an African-American scat singer.
I also talk with film critic Marya Gates and Professor Thomas Doherty about how the Hays Code, which censored Betty Boop, had a profound impact on the moral universe of Hollywood films, and why this defunct production code is still influencing movies up to this day, especially with fantasy entertainment.
Even though she was given a more modest makeover after the passage of the Hays Code in 1934, she stayed popular until she was discontinued in 1939. The dog-turned-doll-like heroine has lived on through syndication and merchandising since television's early days.
On August 9, 1930, Betty Boop made her cartoon debut in the animated short “Dizzy Dishes.” Originally appearing as an anthropomorphic French poodle, Betty Boop transitioned into a human female character a year later, trading in her floppy dog ears for flirty hoop earrings.
