Irène Bordoni

From the A&E "Biography" series, a review of the birth, development and cinematic history of Betty Boop, the flapper cartoon character who has been a popular icon since the 1930s.

Now hear this. The studio that gave the cinema its voice offered 1929 audiences a chance to see and hear multiple silent-screen favorites for the first time in a gaudy, grandiose music-comedy-novelty revue that also included Talkie stars, Broadway luminaries and of course, Rin-Tin-Tin. Frank Fay hosts a jamboree that, among its 70+ stars, features bicyclers, boxing champ Georges Carpentier, chorines in terpsichore kickery, sister acts, Myrna Loy in two-strip Technicolor as an exotic Far East beauty, John Barrymore in a Shakespearean soliloquy (adding an on-screen voice to his legendary profile for the first time) and Winnie Lightner famously warbling the joys of Singing in the Bathtub. Watch, rinse, repeat!

A bumbling senator investigating graft in Louisiana is the target of a scheme involving a Viennese beauty.

Irène Bordoni is cast as Vivienne Rolland, a Parisian chorus girl in love with Massachusetts boy Andrew Sabbot (Jason Robards Sr.) Andrew's snobbish mother Cora (Louise Closser Hale) tries to break up the romance. Jack Buchanan likewise makes his talking-picture debut as Guy Pennell, the leading man in Vivienne's revue. No film elements of Paris are known to exist, although the complete soundtrack survives on Vitaphone disks. The sound tape reels for this film survives at UCLA Film and Television Archive.

A woman living in Paris feels neglected by her husband, so she decides to go to New York City and enjoy herself.

Irene Bordoni sings the title song in French and English with a Bouncing Ball. Cartoon sequences: Betty Boop as a cabaret emcee and cigarette girl; a romantic tom-cat gigolo.