June Foray

From Looney City Citizens

June Foray (born September 18, 1917) is an American voice actress, best known as the voice of many popular animated characters (particularly Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Granny). Her long and prolific career has encompassed radio, theatrical shorts, feature films, television, record albums (particularly with Stan Freberg), video games, talking toys, and other media. Foray was also one of the founding members of ASIFA-Hollywood, the society devoted to promoting and encouraging animation.

[edit] Early life

Foray was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, where her voice was first broadcast in a local radio drama when she was 12 years of age; by age 15, she was doing regular radio voice work. Two years later, she moved to Los Angeles, California, and soon became a popular voice actress on radio there, including on the national programs of Jimmy Durante and Danny Thomas.

[edit] Acting career

In the 1940s, she began film work as well, including a few appearances acting in live-action movies, but mostly doing voiceovers for animated cartoons. At 4'11", Foray's diminutive stature somewhat limited her stage and on-camera acting career.

For Walt Disney, she played Lucifer the Cat in the feature film Cinderella and his Witch Hazel character; she also did a variety of voices in Walter Lantz' Woody Woodpecker cartoons. For Termite Terrace, she was Granny (whom she has played, on and off, since 1943), owner of Tweety and Sylvester, and, memorably, a series of witches, including Witch Hazel, for Chuck Jones; plus, she served as the narrator of Really Scent. She is also the voice of Granny on Baby Looney Tunes.

She voice acted on The Smurfs as Jokey Smurf and Mother Nature, Ursula in George of the Jungle, and on How the Grinch Stole Christmas as Cindy Lou Who, asking "Santa" why he's taking their tree. She was the voice of the original "Chatty Cathy" doll as well as the voice of the evil "Talky Tina" doll in The Twilight Zone episode, "Living Doll". She voiced the wife of the man getting dunked ("Don't tell him, Carlos!") in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Foray worked for Hanna-Barbera, including The Flintstones, Tom and Jerry, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The Jetsons, and many others. She has done extensive voice acting for Stan Freberg's commercials, albums, and 1957 radio series, memorably as secretary to the werewolf advertising executive. Foray has also appeared in several Rankin/Bass TV specials in the 1960s and 1970s.

Most recognizable, though, is her work for Jay Ward: she played nearly every female on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, including Natasha Fatale and Nell Fenwick, as well as Rocket J. Squirrel, who was a boy (a.k.a. Rocky Squirrel). Foray also voiced Magica De Spell and Ma Beagle in the televised cartoon DuckTales. Most significantly in the later part of her career, she had a leading role voicing Grammi Gummi on the television series, Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears, where she worked with her Rocky & Bullwinkle co-star Bill Scott for the final time until his death in 1985.

Foray and Stan Freberg are among the few surviving voice artists from the Golden Age of theatrical cartoons. She remains active to this day, with roles in recent animated films, such as Mulan (as Grandmother Fa) and Looney Tunes: Back in Action. Around 2003, she is a special guest star in an episode of the Power Puff Girls. In October 2006, she portrayed Susan B. Anthony on three episodes of the podcast The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd.

Renowned animator/director Chuck Jones is reported to have said, "June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc, Mel Blanc was the male June Foray."^[1]

In 1995, ASIFA-Hollywood, a chapter of the Association Internationale du Film d'Animation (the International Animated Film Association), established the June Foray Award ^[2], which is awarded to "individuals who have made a significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation." June Foray was the first recipient of the award. At age 90, Foray recently became a contributor to ASIFA-Hollywood's Animation Archive Project.

In 2007, Britt Irvin became the first person ever to voice a character in a cartoon remake that had been previously voiced by Foray in the original series, when she started voicing the character Ursula (Foray's former character) in the new George of the Jungle cartoon series on the Cartoon Network. June Foray was also the voice of Queen Tabitha in the Don Bluth Film Thumbelina.

[edit] Notes

• Foray guest-starred only once on The Simpsons, in the Season 1 episode "Some Enchanted Evening" as the receptionist for the Rubber Baby Buggy Bumper Babysitting Service. This was a play on a famous Rocky & Bullwinkle gag years earlier in which none of the cartoon's characters, including narrator Bill Conrad, could pronounce "rubber baby buggy bumpers" unerringly. This was also a problem in a Tom Slick episode, regular feature on the George of the Jungle cartoon show. Foray was later homaged in The Simpsons, in the season 8 episode "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" in which a character named June Bellamy is introduced as the voice behind both Itchy & Scratchy. She was voiced by series regular Tress MacNeille, though her "Itchy" and "Scratchy" voices were performed by Dan Castellaneta and Harry Shearer, respectively.
• Foray appeared on camera in a major role only once, in Sabaka as a high priestess of a fire cult. She also appeared on camera in an episode of Green Acres as a Mexican telephone operator. She played a gag cameo in 1992's Boris & Natasha. Another on-camera appearance was in the 1984 TV sitcom The Duck Factory, which starred Jim Carrey.
• In Season Three, Episode One ("The Thin White Line") of Family Guy, Foray reprised her role as Rocky in a visual gag with a single line ("And now, here's something we hope you'll really like!").

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