But Betty held her own, successfully defending herself from these advances time and again. She wasn't free from men who openly tried to force unwanted sexual interactions, as was regretfully a product of the time (even Mickey Mouse wasn't above forcing himself on Minnie in the 1928 Disney short Plane Crazy). She was liberated, unashamed, and free, taking on careers like as a pilot, a racecar driver, and even successfully ran for president. However, despite her male gaze sexualization, Betty Boop defied the female stereotyping that befell other female cartoon characters. She was immensely popular, with an article from 1932 hailing her as the " most popular personage on the screen today." There's little doubt that Betty was designed as a sex symbol, with a baby doll face, big eyes, a short skirt, hoop earrings, and a visible garter on one leg, an " archetypal flapper, the speakeasy Girl Scout with a heart of gold." Her high-pitched, coquettish voice and her "Boop-Oop-A-Doop" catchphrase, provided by Mae Questel from 1931 on, just added to the innocent vamp persona that Betty personified. Within a year, she became the Betty Boop we're most familiar with, the flapper girl who is the first all-human cartoon heroine and the first as a headliner of an animated series. On TV, she appeared on panel shows and soap operas, but was perhaps best recalled as a commercial spokesperson for Playtex, Folger's Coffee and especially, as Aunt Bluebell in numerous advertisements for Scott Paper.Betty Boop's first appearance came in 1930's short Dizzy Dishes, where she was introduced as an anthropomorphic French poodle, the girlfriend of Bimbo, a cartoon dog, in Fleischer Studios' Talkartoon series. Perhaps her best screen role was as Woody Allen's domineering mother in his "Oedipus Wrecks" segment of "New York Stories" (1989). In "Funny Girl" (1968), Questel was one of the Lower East Side neighbors of Fanny Brice. Rubin in the 1959 stage production of "A Majority of One" and reprised it in the 1961 film version. Questel also found time to act on stage and in the occasional film, primarily in character parts. (In the series, Questel also gave voice to Swee'pea.) During her long career as a voice actor, she also lent her distinctive abilities to such cartoon figures as Winky Dink, Little Audry and Casper, the Friendly Ghost. Partly due to that pressure and partly because the series' popularity was waning due to changing tastes, Fleischer ended the Betty Boop shorts in 1939 with "Yip, Yip Yippy!." Beginning in 1933, Fleischer had also tapped Questel to lend her talents to the character of Olive Oyl in the Popeye cartoons, more than 450 of which were produced. The provocative character, noted for her short skirts and flirtatious manner, came under fire from women's clubs in the late 1930s. The bob-haired, saucer-eyed Betty Boop became a popular phenomenon, spawning everything from dolls to playing cards to candy to a syndicated comic strip. Over an eight year period, Questel provided the sweetly saucy child-like tones for Betty (and the animators incorporated many of Questel's mannerisms) in more than 100 shorts, including "Boop-Oop-a-Doop" (1932), "Snow White" (1933) and the Oscar-nominated "Riding the Rails" (1938). In 1931, Max Fleischer signed her to provide the vocals for the Kane-inspired cartoon figure Betty Boop. An agent immediately signed Questel and before long she was appearing on the vaudeville circuit as a singer and impressionist, imitating performers from Fanny Brice to Maurice Chevalier. At age 17, the Bronx-born singer-actress won a talent contest mimicking the then-popular baby-voiced entertainer Helen Kane. Petite, with a high-pitched, rounded voice, Mae Questel was the voice behind such cartoon figures as Betty Boop, Olive Oyl and Little Audry.
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