Bonnie Poe

Name:

Clara Rothbart
Bonnie Poe
Bonny Poe
The Betty Boop Girl

Bonnie Poe, born Clara Rothbart (March 6, 1915 – October 16, 1993) was a New Yorker who voiced the animated character Betty Boop in the animated cartoons starting in 1933 at the age of 17, a few months before her 18th birthday. Poe took over the role of Betty while Mae Questel was preparing for a baby.

Other Fleischer Studios characters that Poe was most notable for voicing were Olive Oyl and Buzzy Boop. Poe had blue eyes and she was a brunette, she later dyed her hair blonde.

When Poe was 14 she was a member of Borrah Minevitch’s Harmonica Rascals. Minevitch was probably best known for his role as “Jimmie” in the 1928 musical Good Boy.

Poe was a professional torch singer and she sang torch songs, Poe later sang to live audiences at 14 Broadway nightclubs, in 1932 she briefly performed at a nightclub called the Everglades Club. Poe had originally started out doing Betty’s voice on the Betty Boop Frolics radio show on the NBC network in 1933.

Poe’s first role as Betty in the cartoon series as stated in lawsuit documents was in Mother Goose Land. Her Betty Boop voice was a impersonation of 1920s singer and actress Helen Kane, before she got the role of Betty Boop she was asked directly by Helen Kane to enter a “Helen Kane Impersonation Contest” as Poe often impersonated Helen Kane on the stage.

Helen Kane saw Poe’s impersonation and thought she was talented, and she told Poe that if she entered the contest it would help Poe get some recognition. Bonnie also is said to have looked identical to Kane, and was often mistaken for her mostly particularly in Hollywood on Parade No. A-8, in which Poe is mistaken in person for Kane or Questel.

Poe’s first role in the Fleischer cartoons can be heard in the 1933 Screen Song, Boilesk as several characters, including a flapper that sounded like Betty Boop, alongside Billy Costello. In 1933, Poe appeared with Harriet Lee at the Fox Theater.^[6]Poe created and provided the initial voice for Olive Oyl using a deep oafish-sounding Brooklynese accent, but was later replaced by Mae Questel. Poe continued to do the voice for Betty Boop from 1934 to 1935.

By 1935, she was 20 and had finished voicing Betty Boop for the Betty Boop animated screen series and had moved back to radio. In the same year, Bonnie’s younger sister Evelyn Poe who looked similar in comparison her older sister became a RKO discovery. Bonnie would later provide Betty’s voice in two 1938 shorts when Questel was unavailable, and was subsequently replaced by Margie Hines. Bonnie Poe can also be heard in a majority of the Fleischer Studios cartoons from 1933 to 1938, including the Color Classics releases.

Apart from being a radio voice-over, Poe was also a nightclub singer and hostess with her age being given as 10. In 1934, Poe filed a $25,000 heart balm action against George Raft. 

The suit striction was brought on her behalf by her mother, Mary Rothbart. An individual may file a heartbalm action, a type of civil lawsuit, to obtain financial compensation for the dissolution or disruption of a love or marital relationship. The lawsuit was settled out of court.

Poe later retired from show business, she briefly returned to radio in 1942 as a cast member for Gertrude Berg’s radio show The Goldbergs. As of 2022, her archived vocals were remixed into the “Boop” soundtrack commercial for Guess Originals x Betty Boop.

Quotes:

• Bonnie Poe: “There’s a new feud raging in Hollywood.” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1933)

• Bonnie Poe: “Mickey Mouse insists that the Three Little Pigs are hogging the spotlight.” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1933)

• Bonnie Poe: “Men like Jones Beach because it is the she shore.” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1933)

• Bonnie Poe: “The trouble with modern marriage is that too many couples think a pair beats a full house.” (Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1933)

• Bonnie Poe: “Miss Kane told me about the Helen Kane contest that was going to be held at the Riverside the following week and told me that she thought that it would be a very good idea if I joined the contest.” ($250,000 Infringement Lawsuit)

• Bonnie Poe: “On stage I sang a song called ‘Do Something,’ I sang it in my natural voice, the way I always sound.” ($250,000 Infringement Lawsuit)

• Bonnie Poe: “I heard ‘Do Something’ over the radio and heard lots of people sing it.” ($250,000 Infringement Lawsuit)

• Bonnie Poe: “On the R.K.O. Circuit I went as a comedienne and I played straight form. The young man told jokes and I answered them. First I gave my impersonation of Helen Kane, then I sang a straight song.” ($250,000 Infringement Lawsuit)

• Bonnie Poe: “I started working for the Fleischer Studios in February, 1933.” ($250,000 Infringement Lawsuit)

• Bonnie Poe: “At the Everglades Nite Club I did my own songs, then I did an impersonation of Helen Kane.” ($250,000 Infringement Lawsuit)

Filmography:

1933:

• Betty Boop Fables
• Hollywood on Parade No. A-8
• Snow White
• Mother Goose Land
• Popeye the Sailor
• The Old Man of the Mountain
• Morning, Noon and Night
• Betty Boop’s Hallowe’en Party
• Parade of the Wooden Soldiers
• Boilesk
• I Yam What I Yam
• Blow Me Down!
• Seasin’s Greetinks!
• Wild Elephinks

1934:

• She Wronged Him Right
• Red Hot Mamma
• Betty in Blunderland
• Betty Boop’s Rise to Fame
• Betty Boop’s Life Guard
• Rambling ‘Round Radio Row #9
• Strong to the Finich
• Let’s You and Him Fight
• Can You Take It

1935:

• Dizzy Divers

1936:

• The Twisker Pitcher
• Never Kick a Woman
• Somewhere in Dreamland

1937:

• Educated Fish

1938:

• Out of the Inkwell
• The Swing School
• I Yam Love Sick
• Buzzy Boop

2007:

• Betty Boop’s Double Shift 

Death:

• Bonnie Poe died from complications connected to pneumonia in 1993.

Trivia:

• Before she became the voice of Betty Boop she would impersonate Helen Kane and played the same bill with Kane in Chicago for three weeks somewhere between 1931-1932.

• In 1933 she performed “Don’t Take My Boop-Oop-A-Doop Away” in front of a audience of 2,200 people.

• She was also a radio singer.

• Her mother was Mary Rothbart and she had a sister called Evelyn Poe, who would make her Hollywood debut in 1935. Poe also had a brother Edward “Sonny” Rothbart.

• Poe was also able to portray numerous characters, and also was able to speak and sing using a deeper tone.

• Margie Hines’ Van Beuren credits were erroneously attributed to Bonnie Poe.

• Bonnie Poe can be heard in a majority of Betty Boop cartoons from 1933-1934 and lastly in 1938. 

• Sometimes Poe would utter “Poop-Poop-Pe-Doop” instead of the “Boop-Oop-a-Doop” routine and would sometimes use “Poops” in her Betty Boop songs. “Poop-Poop-a-Doop” is more or less channeling Helen Kane, as Kane’s “Boop” was actually a “Poop” originally.

• In 1934, Bonnie Poe filed a $25,000 heart balm action against George Raft.

• According to a 1933 news article, Poe took over the full-time role of Betty in the cartoons and on various radio events for a short time, while Mae Questel was busy preparing for a baby.

• Poe lived at 236 West 70th Street in New York.