Esther Jones and the Black History of Betty Boop, by Emer Ní Fhoghlú

Via/Flickr

Esther Jones is now often referred to as ‘the real woman who inspired Betty Boop’, but, as ever, the actual case as it unfolds is a lot more convoluted. The first point I want to stress is that we need to stop referring to Jones in terms of womanhood – throughout her own stardom, she was a child performer.

Jones’ association with the cartoon character began when Helen Kane took a suit against Fleischer Studios for the use of her image in creating Betty Boop. Then the truth came out; Kane wasn’t the sole inspiration for the cartoon and didn’t create the singing style as she so claimed – it was popular throughout the 1920s, and scat singing in particular had been developed by black performers.

Plagiarism ran wild in the 20th century as copyright laws developed, but the achievements of black artists were appropriated often without ever being able to take legal action against those who profited from them; neither Jones nor her parents ever brought a suit against Kane. We can presume the damage such a lawsuit would have done to her reputation in a segregated industry posed greater a risk than winning a copyright claim. Industry greats of the US, when black, still faced overt discrimination, with even the most successful struggling to secure performances in larger venues. To be successful in the industry was still a precarious position if it was achieved. Post-WWI, many black artists found themselves emigrating to Europe. Though racism still abounded, artistic industries abroad were more open to their talents and more likely to give them the accolades they deserved. Josephine Baker only became world famous after she left the US, because of the limited opportunities available at home, despite her skill. She went on to become the world’s highest paid performer.

But what about Esther Jones? She became a huge feature in the case discrediting Kane. In the lawsuit, put forward as possible inspirations for Betty Boop’s singing style were Edith Griffith, Félix Mayol (both child performers), Gertrude Saunders (the first scat singer), and, most prominently for all the evidence of Kane attending her performances, Esther Jones.

Esther Jones lived and breathed the industry. Managed by her parents, she was the highest paid child performer by 1929, referred to as a miniature Josephine Baker. She sang, danced and performed acrobatics on the stages of the US, Paris, Berlin, and South America. It’s believed Esther Jones was born c. 1919, so when Kane saw her perform in 1928 she was stealing from a girl between 7-12. Jones’ baby talk was iconic of her act, more naturally since, well, she was a child. “Too cute for words”, ran the Chicago Defender. Furthermore, she took up scat singing c. 1925, whereas Kane only took it up in 1928 – after seeing Jones perform.

In 1932 Kane claimed to have invented the style herself, but an ex-manager of both Kane and Jones revealed that she had gone to Jones’ cabaret act months before Kane recorded her hit, I Wanna Be Loved By You, and she only began combining scat singing with babyish tones after having seen Jones perform. We can look back and say Kane was ‘cancelled’, but only insofar as she had transgressed against her own higher-ups. For all the focus Jones received in the lawsuit, Betty Boop is a white cartoon character and developed as a sex image to go along with the flappers of the time. Allying her image too closely with Jones, whose stardom faded in her mid-teens, is wildly problematic. The studio sited Clara Bow as their inspiration for Betty Boop’s physical appearance, though the creator did admit there was partial inspiration from Kane’s look too.

Recasting Betty Boop as black can’t undo Kane’s appropriation from Jones specifically since the star she was stealing from bears no resemblance to the actual character beyond singing style. No one woman can be credited as the sole source of the character, and pointing at Jones as the one, true inspiration is inaccurate on a few levels. What’s worrisome is when modern talkers on the point cite her as the sole inspiration for the sexually explicit cartoon. In modern discourse, Jones’ age at the time is often obscured – calling her ‘the woman who inspired Betty Boop’ erases the context of her own success and youth, along with the fact that her success dwindled the closer she came to the womanhood that won the cartoon character her immortality. She had more in common with Shirley Temple or Helena Johnson – Esther Jones was a child prodigy of the stage and could sing in several different languages.

What Happened to Esther Jones?

Child stardom has a short life, and Jones didn’t find the same level of fame as an adult. Her acts after the fact don’t provide much of an insight to the woman she became – she continued dancing and acrobatics. Her ex-manager put forward that she was possibly in Paris at the time of the trial, though couldn’t be sure. Her voice from the trial surrounding her life remains tragically absent. What did she end up thinking of Betty Boop, or her career’s impact on surrounding industries? Her own opinions were never revealed when Kane and the studio dissected the character’s origins. Her lived experiences as she experienced them are not recorded, even though her talents were prodigious. We can’t even say for sure when she was born, when she died, or under what circumstances. This is how racism, sexism and ageism of the time have manifested for her – not in her presence, but in her absence from her own story.   

Reclaiming an image

Acknowledging that Jones isn’t the sole inspiration for Betty Boop shouldn’t diminish the spotlight we need to shine on black performers of the time, or the significance Betty Boop has for racism and the arts. Her scat singing wouldn’t exist without black performers, nor the music she sang to. In recent years, black women tattooing the image of Betty Boop, or getting the tattoo, makes a firm statement. Far from nodding to Esther Jones alone, the re-colouring of the character scrutinizes a history of erasure from the arts. It gives image to black flappers of the time, who populated the Jazz Age, enriched the Harlem Renaissance, yet never had their own cartoon flapper image charmingly misbehaving on screen and immortalized in animation, despite driving the culture that gave rise to Betty Boop in the first place. Meanwhile, Esther Jones should always be acknowledged as a star in her own right.

Further reading: Every mention of Esther Jones from papers of the time is compiled to microscopic detail at https://babyestherjones.wordpress.com/