Helen Kane

Helen Kane is one of an elite group of performers, the essence of whose entire careers can be captured with a simple, silly, and catchy expression. "Boop-boop-be-doop!" does it for Kane, just like "I can't get no satisfaction" sums up Mick Jagger. It is a pity that these two careers have little else in common; how nice it would be, for example, if a cartoon character based on some aspect of Jagger's personality had become much more famous than Jagger himself. That's just what happened with Betty Boop and Kane, but it was not the singer who actually worked the voice of the flapper-cartoon heroine. The Boop-scoop, so to speak, was provided by a performer named Mae Questal, first-place winner in a contest to imitate the sound of Kane's voice.



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