Mae Questels Animated Career

[The Boop oop a Doop Girl]

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.)