Helen Kane

Helen Kane

Helen Kane (* as Helen Clare Schroeder , August 4, 1903 in the Bronx , † September 26, 1966 in Queens ) was an American actress and singer . She was particularly known for the song I Wanna Be Loved by You .

life and career

Kane was the daughter of German-Irish immigrants and appeared on stage at the age of 15, with the Marx Brothers in On the Balcony . In the 1920s she toured vaudeville as a singer and dancer, including with an All Jazz Revue . Her Broadway engagements began in 1921 . Among other things, she sang with the vocal trio Three X-Sisters (then Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce - she was the roommate of Jessie Fordyce from the trio). She had her breakthrough in 1927 with the musical A Night in Spain on Broadway. The song That's My Weakness Now , which she sang at the Paramount Theater in Times Square , became a hit for her in 1928. Because she interpolated with the scat singing boop-boop-a-doop , a refrain that also stuck to her as a nickname ( Boop-boop-a-doop Girl , title of an EP by her on MGM in 1954).

In the same year 1928 she had her greatest success in Good Boy by Oscar Hammerstein with the song I Wanna Be Loved By You by Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar . She received top fees and became a cult figure in the late 1920s. A certain external resemblance suggested a role model for the comic figure Betty Boop from Fleischer Studios - she was relatively small and plump with curly black hair, a round face and large brown eyes. Her voice was in a young girl's tone with a mixture of coquetry and apparent naivete, with a slight Bronx accent. Against the resemblance to the cartoon, she went to court in 1932 against Fleischer and Paramount (who spread Betty Boop in so-called talk cartoons ), but was defeated in the end. The defendants were able to show in court that other singers had previously used the phrase boop-boop-a-doop . Helen Kane saw unfair competition in the comic book character, which took away her use of the novelty numbers for which she was known at her own film studio.

She got her clear diction and good timing when singing from her stage experience in vaudeville. In addition to scat, she also used the spoken song, which was fashionable in Berlin during the Weimar Republic at the time . She also starred in several Paramount Pictures films in the late 1920s and early 1930s . Among other things, the college musical Sweetie (1929) with hits like The Prep Step and He's so unusual . She had a leading role in Dangerous Nan McGrew from 1930 (produced by Mack Sennett ), in which she played an entertainer on a traveling medicine show . Another film was the film musical Pointed Heels (1929) with William Powell and Fay Wray .

Its time was over with the start of the Great Depression in the early 1930s. She made occasional appearances, such as the Ed Sullivan Show on television until the 1960s.

She was married three times, her first marriage from 1924 to the department store owner Joseph Kane, which ended effectively after a year, and her second marriage even shorter to the actor Max Hoffman (1932/33). Since 1939 she was married to Dan Healy, with whom she had a restaurant in New York. In 1956 she got breast cancer, which she fought against in vain for the next ten years (with many radiation treatments). The marriages were childless.

Web links

Commons : Helen Kane  - collection of images

• Helen Kane in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Helen Kane in the Internet Broadway Database (English)
• Your dedicated website