A Short Item Promoting PBS' Black History Month Programming ...

Esther Jones Was the Real Betty Boop!

The iconic cartoon character Betty Boop was inspired by a Black jazz singer in Harlem. Introduced by cartoonist Max Fleischer in 1930, the caricature of the jazz age flapper was the first and most famous sex symbol in animation. Betty Boop is best known for her revealing dress, curvaceous figure, and signature vocals “Boop Oop A Doop!” While there has been controversy over the years, the inspiration has been traced back to Esther Jones who was known as “Baby Esther” and performed regularly in the Cotton Club during the 1920s.

Baby Esther’s trademark vocal style of using “boops” and other childlike scat sounds attracted the attention of actress Helen Kane during a performance in the late 1920s. After seeing Baby Esther, Helen Kane adopted her style and began using “boops” in her songs as well. Finding fame early on, Helen Kane often included this “baby style” into her music. When Betty Boop was introduced, Kane promptly sued Fleischer and Paramount Publix Corporation stating they were using her image and style. However video evidence came to light of Baby Esther performing in a nightclub and the courts ruled against Helen Kane stating she did not have exclusive rights to the “booping” style or image, and that the style, in fact, pre-dated her.

Baby Esther’s “baby style” did little to bring her mainstream fame and she died in relative obscurity but a piece of her lives on in the iconic character Betty Boop.

Here’s the problem:

In February, an observer pointed out a problem with the image accompanying the 3-paragraph item, which was part of a 10-item promotional “listicle” — a portmanteau combining a list and an article — on the PBS Black Culture Connections web page.

The image was a photograph with a 1920s patina, showing a stylish Black woman. The header beside it said, “Esther Jones was the real Betty Boop!” PBS digital editors received an email in February saying that the picture in all likelihood was not that of “Baby Esther” Jones, who died at a young age (no one seems to be completely sure when) and may never have been photographed as an adult. The image was simply removed from the item about Betty Boop, but everything else, notably the text, was left intact.

Hindsight being what it is, the email questioning the accuracy of the illustration image should have given pause to PBS executives about the overall accuracy of the item, which actually had been written almost six years before by a staffer who was no longer with the service.

The Betty Boop item, which should have been either corrected or removed with an explanation, went on to be posted and reposted online, sometimes as confirmation of white appropriation of a Black persona. As the item was passed around on social media, PBS became the quoted source for the news that Betty Boop was based on a real-life Black performer.

The grandson of Betty Boop’s creator Max Fleishcer became concerned that PBS had started a social media snowball, spreading an inaccurate version of Betty Boop’s origins and yielding unfair criticism of the illustrator. The grandson is Mark Fleischer. He wrote a letter to PBS in June asking for help from PBS in straightening out the beloved cartoon character’s origins. Mark Fleischer is president and CEO of a company that holds the rights to Betty Boop.

“I’ve been aware for some time of inaccurate theories circulating on social media and elsewhere concerning Betty’s origins, but didn’t know their source,” Fleischer said in a written statement to the PBS Public Editor’s office, after his June letter to PBS. “When I started to see some of these inaccurate theories appearing online saying that they had been confirmed by PBS, which PBS actually did, I became very concerned. It really troubled me that a source as trusted as PBS would repeat and assert conclusions without first ensuring that there was a factual foundation to support those conclusions. In this case, no such foundation existed.”

After the June letter from Mark Fleischer and an inquiry from the Public Editor’s office, PBS web editors took down the article, but left nothing in its place.

PBS Digital managers recently said they were not aware of the item’s replication on social media, and that they had initially treated the item as promotional copy, not journalism. But that distinction means nothing to average readers and audiences. If PBS Digital had followed established protocol for retracting or clarifying dubious content, Internet audiences would have found an explanation that the item had been taken down because of doubts about its accuracy.

Correct steps finally were taken after PBS’ Standards and Practices team stepped into the picture.

PBS Editorial Standards & Practices “are the cornerstone of our commitment to preserving the credibility and integrity of all content that PBS distributes,” said Talia Rosen, PBS Assistant General Counsel and Senior Director for Standards and Practices. “Editorial content should generally not be deleted without explanation, and the editor’s note or correction is tailored to each instance.”

The spot where the problematic item once stood now features the following editor’s note:

Retired: Ten Little Known Black History Facts

Editor’s Note (July 26, 2021): The post titled “Ten Little Known Black History Facts” originally published in February of 2015 has been removed from this site because we are unable to verify the contents of the post.

That explanation does help clean up the PBS process.

“(The Betty Boop item) is a contested narrative that has been publicly debated for some time,” said Amy Wigler, PBS vice president for multiplatform marketing and content. “However, we acknowledged that the Black Culture Connection listicle from years ago was not properly sourced, and we replaced the post with an editor’s note explaining the issue.”

But PBS’ belated action has not completely quieted concerns that a stronger action is needed to eliminate the notion that Betty Boop’s creator appropriated the stage persona of a Black singer. A studio representative suggested PBS should at least contact sites like BlackHistory.com, which attribute the new take on Betty Boop’s history to the PBS item.

This column is an attempt to explain what went wrong after PBS published the item, and establish a more thorough retelling of Betty Boop’s history for Internet search engines to deliver when someone looks her up on the web.