On Wednesday, one of the hottest news items was the fact that “Goodfellas” actor Frank Sivero was suing “The Simpsons” for $250 million supposedly basing the character of “Louie” off of him and his role as Frankie Carbone.
This is hardly the first time a cartoon character has been based on a real person, or on someone else’s intellectual property. The character of Bugs Bunny was heavily inspired by the movie “It Happened One Night.” Clark Gable sat on a fence eating carrots and talking with his mouth full, and the minor character Oscar Shapely repeatedly called Gable “Doc.” Also, Gable invented a fake mobster by the name of “Bugs Dooley” in order to scare Shapely on the train. If you watch the movie, it’s fairly obvious that a lot of Bugs Bunny’s mannerisms were based off of Gable’s character.
While I could talk about “It Happened One Night” all day, there is actually another incident of a cartoon being based on a real person that is actually very similar to Sivero’s situation.
Once upon a time, there was a Jazz Age singer and actress named Helen Kane. Unless you’re like me and are a weirdo who happens to be explicitly fond of 1920′s music, there are only two reasons she might be at all familiar. One, Cyndi Lauper covered her song “He’s So Unusual” for her 1983 album “She’s So Unusual.” Two, she was the basis for the character of Betty Boop.
Like many stars of the day, Kane got her start in vaudeville, mostly as a member of various singing groups. Her big break came when she was tapped for a performance at the Paramount Theater, and during a rendition of “That’s My Weakness Now,” she first sang the scat lyrics “boop-boop-a-doop.” A few days later, she was a star.
There were Helen Kane dolls, Helen Kane look-a-like contests, and she sort of just became this huge icon of the flapper era. There was something about her wide eyes and her baby-voiced Bronx accent that resonated with the times. She did an Oscar Hammerstein show on Broadway, signed with Paramount Pictures to appear in a series of seven musicals, and developed something of a cult following. Even when she wasn’t starring in a movie, she got top billing, because people wanted to see her. She was known, as people were in those days, as the “Boop-a-doop Girl.”
Then, in 1930, perhaps capitalizing on her popularity, an animator for Fleischer Studios named Grim Natwick made a caricature of her as a dog for a cartoon called “Dizzy Dishes”–meant to be a love interest for their character of “Bimbo the Dog.”
Then, as today, it’s not unusual for cartoons to do parodies of popular stars of the day. Back to “Bugs Bunny,” there were several Warner Brothers cartoons with cartoon versions of actor Peter Lorre. Bringing it back to “Goodfellas,” as a friend pointed out yesterday, “Animaniacs” had a long-running parody of that movie called “Goodfeathers.”
However, by 1932, Fleischer Studios changed the parody/dog version of Helen Kane into a human character named Betty Boop. Oddly, despite being human, she remained romantically linked to “Bimbo the Dog.” The company hired a roster of Helen Kane impersonators to provide the speaking and singing voice of Betty Boop. Kane had previously already been pissed off by all the Helen Kane impersonators out there, because she felt they were basically stealing her act and depriving her of jobs that should have been hers.
In 1933, when Kane heard that Fleischer Studios was looking at trying to do a Betty Boop comic strip and that negotiations were currently stalled, she contacted King Features and proposed a comic portraying her as the “Original Boop-Boop-a-Doop Girl“–the caricature of her, naturally, looked exactly like Betty Boop. The strip ran in Hearst papers from 1933-1934, and followed Kane’s adventures in trying to distinguish herself from Betty Boop.
However, as her career began to falter, and as she was increasingly recognized on the street as Betty Boop and not Helen Kane, Kane sued Fleischer Studios for $250,000. Which, to me, makes it a pretty spooky coincidence that Sivero is suing for $250 million.
Kane sued the company for wrongful appropriation and unfair competition–meaning that it was unfair for her to have to compete with a cartoon version of herself, and that it was hurting her career.
However, Fleischer Studios denied that the character was based explicitly on her–first pointing to the fact that the character also looked like actress Clara Bow and could have kinda-sorta been based on her, too.
Also, the Helen Kane impersonators hired to do the voice-work not only sounded like Kane, but looked like her as well. In fact, at that point–as Kane had put on some weight–one of those impersonators, Ann Rothschild, known as “Little Ann Little”–at 5’0″ and 100lbs, looked more like Betty Boop than she did. Rothschild also claimed that she invented the “boop-boop-a-doop” line herself.
All of the Betty Boop voices came to the court to testify on behalf of Fleischer, including Mae Questel, who is notable for also having provided the voice for Olive Oyl–which, interestingly enough, was based on comedic actress Zasu Pitts.
The trial would last for two years as Kane fought to argue that the character was indeed based on her, and was hurting her career.
When it was starting to become obvious that the character was, in fact, based on Kane, the defense changed tactics and went about proving that Kane didn’t invent herself, or the “boop-a-doop” line either.
Now, being that it was the 20s, there was a whole lot of Columbusing going on. If you think Miley Cyrus steals shit from black artists (which, duh, she does), you should listen to some of the songs by popular white singers back in the 20s and 30s. All of the white, jazz age singers–including people I really do love, like Ruth Etting, Sophie Tucker and Annette Hanshaw–were basically just copying and whitewashing the jazz and blues styles of black performers.
But this one was specific as hell. The defense claimed that Kane had stolen her baby voice schtick and the “boop-boop-a-doop” line from a black nightclub singer named Esther Jones, who went by the stage name “Baby Esther.”
Although Jones was “presumed dead” at the time of the trial (apparently no one cared to check?), her manager testified that Kane and her manager had seen Jones perform at the Harlem Cotton Club back in 1928. After hearing a recording of Jones singing, the judge found that Kane’s baby-voiced singing was not her own invention, and ruled in favor of Fleischer Studios.
Kane dropped out of show business in 1935, claiming she was just too tired to continue. After a brief comeback in the late ’50s and early ’60s, she died in 1966 at age 62 after a decade long battle with breast cancer.
As an addendum, years later, in the Woody Allen movie Zelig, Mae Questel played the voice of Helen Kane for a song called “Chameleon Days,” which was the closest she ever got to admitting that the Betty Boop character was based on her. What with it being the same voice she used and all.
There are a lot of similarities in these two lawsuits, nearly a hundred years apart. My first thought when I saw the comparison photo of Louie and Frank Sivera was that I know a lot of fellas who look–and sound–a lot like that. Including some I’m related to. Like Kane’s baby-voiced flapper, a Sicilian mobster with a Brooklyn accent isn’t a wholly new or original invention–either in film or in real life.
However, unlike Kane, Sivero cannot exactly claim that this cartoon has been detrimental to his career. It was a character he played one time, not an act he intended to repeat for the rest of his life.
If Kane vs. Fleischer is any indication of how this lawsuit will proceed, it doesn’t seem like he has a terribly good chance of winning. Particularly since the character has been on the show for 23 years now.
Sources other than my own memory!
The Helen Kane Wikia
BlackAmericaWeb
Internet Archive