If you have a free-use photo of this person, please upload it!
Mae Questel (13 September 1908 – 4 January 1998) was an American voice actress. She redubbed the voice of Wiggy Rockstone on The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show.
Biography[]
Mae Questel's Orthodox Jewish family were totally averse to her having an entertainment career. Her parents and grandparents forced her to leave the Theatre Guild school (New York) while she was still a young teenager, and had their wills drawn up accordingly so as to discourage this career choice.
Her surname was originally spelled Kwestel. She studied drama at Columbia University, and belonged to the American Theatre Wing.
When Mae was seventeen and living in the South Bronx, she won a local contest to find the girl who most resembled Helen Kane, a popular singer known as the "Boop-Oop-A-Doop Queen". She was promptly signed by an agent and began performing in the vaudeville circuit. Billing herself as "Mae Questel - Personality Singer of Personality Songs", she performed dead-on vocal imitations of Maurice Chevalier, Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Marlene Dietrich, Mae West and, of course, Helen Kane, among many others. Her mimic talent also provided animal and baby sounds for radio shows.
Betty Boop creator Max Fleischer heard Mae doing her "boop-oop-a-doop" routine and hired her in 1931 to do the character's voice. She served as the voice on more than 150 Betty Boop animated shorts until the character was retired in 1939. Her recording of "On the Good Ship Lollipop" sold more than two million copies during the Depression.
Best known as the voice of "Betty Boop", she was also the voice of equally famous Olive Oyl, the toddler Swee'pea and others in the Popeye cartoons. She did Popeye's voice once, in the cartoon "Shape Ahoy" (1945), because Jack Mercer was serving in the military during World War II. Her versatility is probably better appreciated in the cartoon "Never Kick a Woman" (1936), in which she provides the quivery, nervous-Nellie voice of Olive Oyl, based on comedic actress Zasu Pitts, and the deep, assured, alluring voice of the blond saleswoman, based on Mae West.
In 1968, the city of Indianapolis honored her with a "Mae Questel Day". In 1979, she won the Troupers Award for outstanding contribution to entertainment.
External Links[]
- Mae Questel at the Internet Movie Database
- Popeye the Sailorpedia: Mae Questel