Questel, with her experience in radio and vaudeville performance, was a perfect match for the voice of Betty Boop. © King Features Syndicate/Fleischer Studios.

Her Early History
Mae Questel was a natural "ham," born into a family that didn't believe show business was a suitable profession for a respectable girl. The young New Yorker had obvious talent and performed frequently at charitable and community functions. However, professional opportunities were rejected by both her parents and grandparents.

In retrospect, it seems inevitable that Mae would eventually enjoy a professional theatrical career. While still a child, for instance, her talent brought her into the circle of famed violinist Mischa Ellman, who introduced her to many important people. Her career came about, however, not through the intercession of the powerful, but through a confluence of talent and pure happenstance at a time when she thought she had given up her theatrical aspirations for good.

Mae had embarked upon a career in teaching when some of her friends, knowing her to be a natural mimic, entered her in a Helen Kane impersonation contest at the RKO Fordham Theater where Miss Kane was appearing. Mae was concerned that such a public display would be inappropriate for a teacher, but she participated in the competition and was, of course, victorious. Alone among the competitors, Mae decided to watch Kane's act before the contest began, and as a result emulated the star with greater accuracy than any of the other contestants. Combined with her natural oomph, Mae's dead-on mimicry earned her a contract with the RKO vaudeville circuit which finally kicked off her professional career.

Mae quickly developed an act ("Mae Questel - Personality Singer of Personality Songs") that included impersonations of such other celebrities as Eddie Cantor, Ruth Etting and Maurice Chevalier. She began appearing on radio programs and in short order was chosen by cartoon producer Max Fleischer to be the voice of his animated Helen Kane look/sound-alike, "Betty Boop."

An Animated Career
Taking the role of Betty Boop made Mae Questel immortal (and perhaps vice-versa), but the Fleischers got something out of the bargain as well the first in a stable of voice actors that would make Paramount cartoons second to none in the field of vocal characterizations. With the addition of Jack Mercer (Popeye) in the mid-1930s, the Fleischer cartoons began featuring top-quality vocal tracks long before most other cartoons from either New York or Hollywood could even come close. Mae's ability to ad-lib helped the cartoons tremendously as did her magical way with a song. In due time, Mae added other Paramount characters, both male and female, to her repertoire, voicing Olive Oyl, Pudgy and a host of other creations.

When Fleischer Studios moved to Florida in the late 1930s, Mae, who had a young family in New York, decided to stay behind. As a result, she did only a little work for Paramount's cartoon unit during the early 1940s. However, when the studio returned to New York sans the Fleischers in 1943, Mae returned to her position as its primary female actor. Jackson Beck, Arnold Stang and Sid Raymond were added to the ensemble during the '40s and '50s and this tightly-knit vocal unit turned out some of the most satisfying voice tracks of animation's golden age. (Mercer, Questel and Beck also did a series of more than 200 Popeye cartoons made directly for television that were syndicated in the early 1960s.)