Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Mae Questel

From Wikipedia:
Mae Questel (September 13, 1908 - January 4, 1998) was an American actress and voice artist.
Born Mae Kwestel in New York City, Questel won a talent contest at the age of 17, and began performing in vaudeville. She was seen by animator Max Fleischer, who was looking for an
actress to provide the voice for his Betty Boop character. From 1930 until 1939 Questel provided the voice of Betty Boop in more than 150 animated shorts. During the 1930s she released a recording of "On The Good Ship Lollypop" which sold more than 2 million copies.

From the mid 1930s Questel also provided the voice for Olive Oyl in the Popeye animated shorts. She based Olive's nasal vocal style on that of the legendary actress ZaSu Pitts, and ultimately played the role for more than twenty years.



Questel made her first on-screen appearance in the 1960s and was widely seen as one of Fanny Brice's mother's card-playing friends at the start of Funny Girl (1968). She appeared in Zelig (1983) and memorably (as a celestial apparition) in New York Stories (1989) (making her the only actress to ever play Woody Allen's mother on-screen).

Her final film appearance was in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989). She also provided the voice for her old character Betty Boop in a cameo appearance in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). She achieved perhaps her greatest visibility in television commercials for various household products, most notably as "Aunt Bluebell", pitching Scott Towels.

Mae Questel died from complications related to Alzheimer's Disease at the age of 89 in New York City in 1998.

Mae Questel - The Skipping Record (mp3)

7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

sweet...thanks

9:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

tiYour site is always interesting! Much thanks. I wish you would post Teddy and the Frat Girls again, I can't find them anywhere.

3:14 PM  
Blogger DZONDZON said...

The title of the Song I downloaded here was "Broken Record". It was the flip side of the Music Goes 'round and 'round 78.

9:55 PM  
Blogger Wastedpapiers said...

Brilliant! Thanks for this.

2:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i feel sorry for her wish betty boops voice person was still alive
but she will go on with all the boops she said

9:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This site is wonderful that is my great great aunt thanks

4:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Mae Westel, er, I mean Questel,
has gotta be one of the strangest
women AND voices to ever hit the great white way. Helium would most assuredly have been a redundancy in sweet mae's case...and oh my, how many wonderful hours I spent(or
wasted) watching WFLD32 in Chicago(pre-fox...take that Rupert Murdoch!)and the popeye hour, waiting for those glorious 1930 era
black and white ones ...every now and then they'd toss one in as a
bone for the kids, but we got mostly those stinky color ones from the 50's.......

4:08 AM  

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