There's Mae Questel, Betty's voice. Sidney Skolosky of the N. Y. Daily News recently had this to say of Miss. Questel (We know she won't mind): Betty Boop enjoyed only mild popularity until Mae Questel got the job. Then she became a favorite with the movie' fans. Miss Questel almost looks like Betty Boop. She is 5 feet 1 inch in height, has black, bobbed hair and sparkling eyes, and talks like Helen Kane. In fact she began her theatrical career in an amateur impersonation contest in a Bronx theater and won a prize for mimicking the Boop-a-Doop gal. Up to that time she had been teaching elocution privately. So the voice you hear in that animated cartoon is that of an elocution teacher. But after she won that amateur contest Mae deserted the classroom for the stage. She started out in vaudeville doing a single and later appeared with Waite Hoyt and Fred Coots when that act played the Palace. She also played in Nancy Carroll's flicker Wayward. It was when Max Fleischer was looking for a new Betty Boop he had tried a number but they all failed that she was sent to him. She was founded to be perfect for the part. She was Betty Boop. Fleischer will tell you she isn't Betty Boop, but that Betty Boop is Mae Questel! That's how good he believes she is. In her job she must sign in German, Polish and Spanish. She got a medal at school for Spanish. She can and does do impersonations of Marlene Dietrich, Maurice Chevalier, Fanny Brice, Lyda Roberti, Rudy Vallée and others. There's no telling when, as Betty Boop, she may be called upon to do any of those characters. She doesn't care that the audience hears her but doesn't see her. She doesn't insist on being that type of a star. Now however all her friends and her boy friend call her Betty Boop. She's only 19, went to Morris High School, and is Russian - Polish. She smokes, takes a drink now and then, and chews gum constantly. Often while she is recording a number for the cartoon she forgets herself and keeps chewing gum.
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