Description:
Helen Kane (August 4, 1904[1] – September 26, 1966) was an American popular singer; her signature song was "I Wanna Be Loved By You". Kane's voice and appearance were a likely source for Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick when creating Betty Boop, itself a style originating from Baby Esther, although It-girl Clara Bow is another possible influence.
Born as Helen Clare Schroeder, Kane attended St. Anselm's Parochial School in the Bronx. She was the youngest of three children. Her father, Louis Schroeder, the son of a German immigrant, was employed intermittently; her Irish immigrant mother, Ellen (born Dixon)
Helen Kane (August 4, 1904[1] – September 26, 1966) was an American popular singer; her signature song was "I Wanna Be Loved By You". Kane's voice and appearance were a likely source for Fleischer Studios animator Grim Natwick when creating Betty Boop, itself a style originating from Baby Esther, although It-girl Clara Bow is another possible influence.
Born as Helen Clare Schroeder, Kane attended St. Anselm's Parochial School in the Bronx. She was the youngest of three children. Her father, Louis Schroeder, the son of a German immigrant, was employed intermittently; her Irish immigrant mother, Ellen (born Dixon) Schroeder, worked in a laundry.[2]
Kane's mother reluctantly paid $3 for her daughter's costume as a queen in Kane's first theatrical role at school. By the time she was 15 years old, Kane was onstage professionally, touring the Orpheum Circuit with the Marx Brothers in On the Balcony.[3]
She spent the early 1920s trouping in vaudeville as a singer and kickline dancer with a theater engagement called the "All Jazz Revue". She played the New York Palace for the first time in 1921. Her Broadway days started there as well with the Stars of the Future (1922–24, and a brief revival in early 1927). She also sang onstage with an early singing trio, the Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce, later known as The Three X Sisters.
Kane's roommate in the early 1920s was Jessie Fordyce. The singing trio act might have become the Hamilton Sisters and Schroeder; however, Pearl Hamilton chose Fordyce to tour as a trio act "just to see what happens" at the end of the theatrical season.
Kane's career break came in 1927, when she appeared in a musical called A Night in Spain. It ran from May 3, 1927, through Nov 12, 1927, for a total of 174 performances, at the 44th Street Theatre in NYC. Subsequently, Paul Ash, a band conductor, put Kane's name forward for a performance at New York's Paramount Theater.
Kane's first performance at the Paramount Theater in Times Square proved to be her career's launching point. She was singing "That's My Weakness Now", when she interpolated the scat lyrics “boop-boop-a-doop”. This resonated with the flapper culture, and four days later, Helen Kane’s name went up in lights.
Oscar Hammerstein’s 1928 show Good Boy was where she first introduced the hit "I Wanna Be Loved by You". Then it was back to the Palace, as a headliner for $5,000 a week. She rejoined her friends from vaudeville, The Three X Sisters (formerly The Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce) for one night. In a 1935 live stage performance, she harmonized with their unique banter to a novelty tune "The Preacher and the Bear".
Kane had excellent diction, intonation and timing, learned during her apprenticeship in vaudeville. Her songs have a strong word focus and capitalize on her coquettish voice. She blended several fashionable styles of the late 1920s. These included scat singing, a kind of vocal improvisation, and also blending singing and speech. Sprechgesang ("speech-song") was fashionable at this time in Germany's Weimar Republic in both nightclubs and in serious music.
Kane recorded 22 songs between 1928 and 1930. After 1930 and up to 1951, she recorded four sides for Columbia Records in addition to the "Three Little Words" soundtrack single recording of "I Wanna Be Loved by You".[4] She also recorded four songs that comprise a 1954 MGM 45Ep entitled "The Boop Boop a Doop Girl".
FILMS:
In mid-1929, Paramount Pictures signed Kane to make a series of musicals at a salary as much as $8,000 a week (equivalent to over $160,000 in 2009).
Her films were:
1929: Nothing But the Truth, a comedy starring Richard Dix
1929: Sweetie, a college musical, which starred Nancy Carroll, Jack Oakie and Stanley Smith
1929: Pointed Heels, which starred William Powell and Fay Wray
1930: Paramount on Parade, an all-star extravaganza
1930: Dangerous Nan McGrew, with Stuart Erwin, Frank Morgan, and Victor Moore
1930: Heads Up!, starring Buddy Rogers and Victor Moore
1931: A Lesson in Love, a musical short film
It should be noted that although Helen was not the "star" of most of her pictures (with Dangerous Nan McGrew being the one exception) she was so popular that in the case of "Sweetie", her name appeared over the title on the marquee when the movie premiered at the New York Paramount (although Nancy Carroll was the true star). Helen provided all the fun and she and Jack Oakie danced to "The Prep Step", a big hit along with "He's So Unusual". They even performed this dance at the very first Hollywood Bowl fundraiser in 1929.[5] Another hit from this picture was Nancy Carroll's "My Sweeter Than Sweet".
In the opening credits of Pointed Heels, Helen and William Powell are billed on the same line just below the title, with Fay Wray and the rest in smaller letters underneath. She had equal billing with Buddy Rogers in Heads Up! and it is their faces which appeared in all the ads. And in Dangerous Nan McGrew, Helen received top billing in the film's credits.
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