BETTY BOOP Wiki
BETTY BOOP Wiki
Chameleon Days[1]

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Name

"Chameleon Days"[2] by Mae Questel as Helen Kane

Audio:

Zelig:

Everybody go chameleon

Everybody show chameleon

Take it fast or slow

Chameleon, chameleon, chameleon days

Everybody think chameleon

Every time you blink chameleon

In your kitchen sink

Chameleon, chameleon, chameleon days

They're all around us

When we wake up every day

Ooo, I'm glad they found us

'Cause they take the blues away

Hey, hey!

Everywhere you go chameleon

Everything is so chameleon

Top of your head to your toe

Chameleon, chameleon, chameleon days

They're so much fun

They'll even just right through a hoop

Ah, and they change color

When they're swimming in your soup

Boop-Boop-Be-Doop!

Flying in the air chameleon

Rolling in your hair chameleon

Take away all your care

Chameleon, chameleon, chameleon days

Trivia

  • Questel indirectly admitted in this song that she used to impersonate Helen Kane.
  • The song was composed by jazz composer and musician Richard "Dick" Hyman.
  • Hyman stated, "We got Mae Questel to do that in her Betty Boop voice. In the early 1930s she did the voice of Betty Boop, although she wasn't the original voice, and since then she's made a great career of character voices. She is Olive Oyl and occasionally Popeye."
  • The "Chameleon Days" soundtrack was released in 1983.
  • "Chameleon Days" contains a heavily Jewish instrumental, American actress Helen Kane of Irish-German descent did not sing Jewish-sounding songs. Though some of her hit songs were written by Jewish composers and lyricists. However with the producer, and both Betty Boop and Mae Questel being Jews, it makes sense that the song would sound Jewish.
  • The song "Chameleon Days" was inspired a 1920s song called "Crinoline Days" by Paul Whiteman.
  • Recording engineer Roy Yokelson who helped produce the music collected old cartoons, and he was a big fan of Mae Questel.
  • To make Fanny Brice sing about Zelig, Hyman completely reconstructed the music from the original film clip.
  • The original author of "Crinoline Days" was Irving Berlin. It was granted copyright on November 2, 1922. The original vocalist was a vaudevillian named Grace LaRue.