1/13/2024 0 Comments Betty boop voiceMiss Questel seemed to be just what Fleischer was seeking. Sound pictures were developing the while, and Betty needed a voice. The radio boys heard her and she went on the air. Within a few weeks she found herself making the movie house circuits with her impersonation. She appeared at a Bronx movie house and won the contest by two doops and a boop. Miss Questel was conducting an elocution class and had ambitions to get on the stage. It all began a couple of years ago when a contest was being held in New York's neighborhood theaters to find the best imitator of Helen Kane, then the outstanding boop-a-doop girl. When, in the Broadway offices of Max Fleischer, cartoonists go to work on the Queen of Boop, it is Mae who rolls her eyes, wiggles her hips and otherwise models the role.įrom an inkwell character, Betty Boop has become a caricature of the young lady who furnishes her voice.Īnd, on the other hand, Mae Questel has studied hundreds of reels in an effort to develop a voice that would fit the character of the animated cartoon. Furthermore, Mae is today the model for Betty. Mae Questel is that oop-de-yoop voice you hear when Betty sings or converses. Thus a shrinking violet plucked from the garden might turn into a Russian duke disguised as a Savoy-Plaza doorman.īut up in New York's Bronx is a highly animated young lady who has been nationally identified as a series of pen scratches and a voice.Īlmost anyone who attends the movies has made the acquaintance of Betty Boop. NEW YORK, July 14.-In the tales of the better Magi, it was assumed possible to transform, the inanimate into the animate. The photo accompanied the story.īoop-a-doop! Here's a Movie Star Never Seen on the Screen When was her first appearance in cartoons? This 1932 feature story by the National Enterprise Association doesn’t say but she obviously was voicing the character by the time it was published. Later in the year, she appeared on Rudy Vallee’s top-rated show for Fleischmann’s Yeast. She then appeared on the Camel Pleasure Hour on WJZ (NBC Blue) on Wednesday, Mawhere she did impressions of Maurice Chevalier, Irene Bordoni and (are you surprised?) Helen Kane and sang “There’s Danger in Your Eyes Cherie,” “Ain’t Cha” and “Valentine.” She also occasionally sang on a 15-minute Wednesday night show on NBC Red called RCA Radiotron Varities, and replaced it on May 27th for a mere six weeks. Questel’s first radio performance was apparently on the Radio Keith-Orpheum Program on WEAF (and the NBC Red Network) on Thursday, December 19, 1929, not long after she won the contest. One must wonder how Kane felt about Questel when she sued the Fleischer cartoon studio for expropriating her act and infusing it into Betty Boop-with Questel as Betty’s voice. It also pointed out Helen Kane herself set up the contest that Questel won and then predicted she would appear on Broadway. The same paper 18 days later revealed she was appearing unbilled at the Palace in the Waite Hoyt and Freddie Coots act. The New York Sun of Janureported Questel “first came to public notice when she won the recent R-K-O Greater Manhattan Helen Kane contest,” had been appearing at the Franklin Theatre in the Bronx and was about to open at the Eighty-First Street Theatre. During the 1960s, when the Popeye cartoons stiffened for television, Questel, Jack Mercer and Jackson Beck turned in top performances. Questel turned Olive from a whiney Zasu Pitts clone into a unique personality, and she imbued Betty with a cheerful, tuneful enthusiasm. Questel wasn’t the only voice-or first, for that matter-of Olive Oyl or Betty Boop, but she’s really the only one almost anyone remembers. Is there any doubt the premier cartoon voice actress based in New York City was Mae Questel? If not, she’s certainly the most beloved.
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