Of the various girls who are said to have done the voice of Betty Boop, none made more out of it than Mae Questel.
Although the names of Bonnie Poe, Little Ann Little and Catherine “Kate” Wright are often bruited about, Questal became most associated with Betty Boop in the films.
On record, she was really the only one to become so associated.
On February 13, 1933, Questel went into one of Victor’s studios in midtown Manhattan, and, to the accompaniment of a small instrumental combination, recorded “Don’t Take My Boop-Oop-A-Doop Away”, and “The Girl In The Little Green Hat”, the latter a tongue-twisting popular song of the time.
On the first selection above, she is assisted by the prolific Canadian crooner, Dick Robertson. He sings a section of “Sweet Betty” before Mae comes in to make her case for the retention of her “boop-oop-a-doop”. Robertson’s career on wax encompassed more than twenty years, and went from pop songs of the day, through pseudo-country or “citybilly” numbers, to small-band fodder for the jukeboxes of the time.
Between early 1935 and late 1937, Mae did several records for Decca. All had small combo accompaniment, such as was given to Dick Robertson, the King’s Men, and other New York artistes of the time.
Interestingly, while the labels usually identified Mae as “The Betty Boop Girl”, most of the songs she cut for Decca were “covers” of songs introduced by Shirley Temple in her movies.
Shirley herself did not get to record these songs commercially, as Fox, and then Twentieth Century-Fox did not want their stars recording for the “take home” trade. Alice Faye defied the studio for a while, but eventually stopped making commercial records, while Mary Healy was only allowed to record if the labels had the legend “20th Century-Fox Star” on them.
Even more curious: they couldn’t–or wouldn’t–stop Carmen Miranda from making records of the songs from her Fox pictures.
A year after the last Betty Boop short hit the screen, Mae was back in the Decca studios, cutting two more sides. These appeared as “Mae Questel (Betty Boop)”, and were two ‘evergreens”–one of which (“You’d Be Surprised”), she sang in one of her early Thirties cartoons.
Mae would return to the recording studios in the 1950’s. She did some Yiddish-inflected sides for Jubilee early in the decade. Other records she made were aimed strictly at the kiddies, and are,tus. more in Mr. Ehrbar’s bailiwick. These include sides connected with her appearance on the CBS series “Winky Dink and You”, or with her continuing role as Olive Oyl.
As for the other girls who appear in a brief bit of newsreel footage from around the time that Helen Kane was suing Paramount over alleged appropriation of her catch-phrase and image in the “Betty Boop’ shorts–only Catherine Wright is even a blip on record collectors’ radar.
In 1929, Catherine Wright did four sides for Columbia, which were issued on two discs as by “The Mystery Girl”. Of he four sides, two were “covers” of songs that Helen Kane did for Victor–“He’s So Unusual” and “I’d Do Anything For You”.
What makes this all the more interesting is that Columbia had another singer on staff who was even better at imitating Helen Kane–according to Helen Kane.
Annette Hanshaw, a teenage prodigy, did many records for Columbia’s bargain labels, in her own style. But she did some covers of Helen Kane songs, too–appearing under the pseudonyms of “Dot Dare” and “Patsy Young”.
Apparently, Hanshaw and Kane were good friends.
Next Week: Sailor Man Rhythm
James Parten has overcome a congenital visual disability to be acknowledged as an expert on the early history of recorded sound. He has a Broadcasting Certificate (Radio Option) from Los Angeles Valley College, class of 1999. He has also been a fan of animated cartoons since childhood.
I collecting record and films for many years I always though with Fox or 20 Century Fox – they must have had an odd stipulation in the contract’s for movie stars that if they were already recording artist they were allowed to continue to make commercial records, but if they were not already making records they were not allowed make them. This can be said about many of their musical stars such as John Payne, Betty Grable, Don Ameche, and many others as it was Shirley Temple. However this did not include radio broadcast transcriptions.
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Books I’ve read on Dick Haymes and Carmen Miranda both stated exactly that. If they already had a record contract prior to signing with 20 Century-Fox (which was true of Haymes and Miranda) then they continued to make records, but Fox didn’t permit any of its stars to sign record deals once they were under contract to them. Unlike, say, MGM or Paramount, who saw phonograph records as valuable promotional tools, Fox was afraid that if people could buy records of Betty Grable or Shirley Temple singing the songs from their latest picture, then they would be less inclined to go out to the theater and see the movie. In the ’30s, Fox was offered a great deal of money by Victor to allow Shirley Temple to sign a record deal, but they refused to permit it.
Mae Questel recorded an entire album of Shirley Temple songs for Harmony Records in 1958, titled ON THE GOOD SHIP LOLLIPOP. (Harmony was a subsidiary of Columbia records and specialized in budget-priced LPs.)
Kate Wright was used for BETTY BOOP’S BIG BOSS and for the vocal on YOU’D BE SURPRISED. She also recorded for Columbia as a Helen Kane impersonator billed as “The Mystery Girl.”
I have two sides Mae did with Red Norvo’s group in 1934. The Music Goes Round And Round and The Broken Record. Very interesting to say the least!
I’m pretty sure that’s Rudy Vallee and not Dick Robertson. Looks and sounds like him, to me!
That’s Vallee on the film, sure enough.
But, Dick Robertson did the Victor Record–Vallee was recording for Columbia at the time the record was made.
Annette Hanshaw was one of those good jazz vocalists who sounded very much like Mae Questel in singing all those sexy little numbers, and she almost always ended her songs with the words “That’s all!”…She was the only one with real talent to sing and was accompanied by all the best hot dance bands of her day, most of the best jazz outfits accompanied her and for that reason she was popular with jazz afficionados. Betty Boop must have had a big influence on Hanshaw for she modelled herself on the cartoon image and was regarded (along with Ruth Etting) as the typical “Radio Sweetheart” of the pre-war years.