Bimbo first appears as the name of an alcoholic punch, mentioned in newspapers from New York state (1837), Boston (1842), and New Orleans (1844, but as having come from Boston).
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From 1860-1910, Bimbo as a proper name is frequent: It is the name or part of the name of several race horses, dogs, and monkeys, a circus elephant (perhaps echoing jumbo), and a jester character in a play.
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A separate bimbo seems to have entered American English c. 1900, via immigration, as an Italian word for a little child or a child's doll, evidently a contraction of bambino "baby."
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By 1919 it began to be used generally of a stupid or ineffectual man, a usage Damon Runyon traced to Philadelphia prize-fight slang.
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By 1920 the female word with a sense of "floozie" had developed, perhaps boosted by "My Little Bimbo Down on Bamboo Isle," a popular 1920 song in which the singer (imploring the audience not to alert his wife) tells of his shipwreck "on a Fiji-eeji Isle" and his "bimbo down on that bamboo isle... she's got the other bimbos beat a mile."
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The female word fell from common use after the 1930s, and in the 1967 Dictionary of American Slang, only the shortened form bim (attested by 1924) was regarded as worthy of an entry. It began to revive circa 1975; in the R rated 1983 film Flashdance it was the misogynistic villain's insult of choice for the female dancers. Its resurrection during 1980s U.S. political sex scandals led to derivatives including diminutive bimbette (1983) and male form himbo (1988).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/bimbo
