Sara Berner: Movies & Box Office

Sara Berner (born Lillian Ann Herdan on January 12, 1912 in Albany, New York) was an American actress celebrated for her extraordinary skill with dialects and character voices. She began her performing life in vaudeville, touring with Major Edward Bowes' all‑girl unit after winning an amateur‑hour audition, and quickly became known for rapid impersonations of Hollywood stars such as Mae West and Katharine Hepburn. After the vaudeville years she transitioned to network radio in Hollywood, where she landed recurring parts on Fibber McGee & Molly, The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, and most famously as the wise‑cracking telephone operator Mabel Flapsaddle on The Jack Benny Program. Her radio persona was so popular that she was given her own NBC series, Sara’s Private Caper, in 1950, playing a stenographer‑detective, although the show lasted only eleven weeks. Berner’s talent also flourished in the animation studios of the Golden Age. She provided celebrity‑style impressions for Disney’s Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938) and Warner Bros.’ Hollywood Steps Out (1941), later becoming the debut voice of Andy Panda for Walter Lantz and, in 1953, singing the opening theme for the first Chilly Willy cartoon. Her animated credits include voices for Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, The Zoot Cat, and the silent Jerry Mouse in the dance sequence of Anchors Aweigh (1945). On the big screen she appeared in supporting roles from 1942 to 1957, most notably as a camel named Mabel in Road to Morocco and as part of a married couple in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954). Throughout the 1950s she made frequent television appearances, was honored on This Is Your Life, and performed at the 1961 Grammy Awards. Despite a decline in work during the 1960s, her legacy endured as a pioneering voice artist whose dialect range spanned French, Spanish, Italian, Southern American, and New York English, earning praise from Eddie Cantor and lasting admiration from fans of classic radio and animation.