Forgotten Hollywood

Manny P. here…

“`June Foray was an iconic voice actor, who was best known as the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel, Lucifer from Disney’s Cinderella, and Cindy Lou Who, among others. Her career encompassed radio, theatrical shorts, features, television, recorded albums  (particularly with Stan Freberg), video games, talking toys, and other media. She was often compared to her male counterpart, Mel Blanc.

“`Foray starred in her own radio series, Lady Make Believe, in the late 1930s. She became a popular voice actress, with regular appearances on coast-to-coast network programs, including Lux Radio Theater and The Jimmy Durante Show. During the 1940s, she began film work, including a few roles in live action productions; but mostly doing voiceovers for animation. She worked for Walt Disney, Walter Lantz, Chuck Jones, and Hanna-Barbera.

“`By the time television became popular, June Foray played a variety of characters on The Flinstones,  The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, and Tom and Jerry. After Mattel hired June to voice the popular Chatty Cathy, Rod Serling cast her as Talking Tina in a teriffic episode of The Twilight Zone. A role she regrettably lost — Betty Rubble on The Flinstones, which went to Bea Benaderet.

“`For Jay Ward, Foray performed nearly every female character in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, including Natasha; and in  Fractured Flickers. June was also memorable as Ursula in the George of the Jungle cartoon program. Her voice appeared in the movie, Jaws.

“`She is credited with coming up with the notion of the Annie Awards in 1972, having noted that there had been no awards to celebrate the field of animation.  In 1988, she was awarded the  Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award. Her most lasting legacy might be a tireless campaign to get the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to include an Oscar category for Best Animated Feature, which they finally did in 2011.

“`In 2012, June finally received her first Emmy nomination, and actually won in the category of Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program  for her performance as  Mrs. Cauldron on The Garfield Show; becoming at age 94, the oldest entertainer to be nominated for, and to win, a television statuette.  In 2013, Foray was honored with a Governors Award at the 65th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards.

“`The legendary June Foray was 99.

Until next time>                               “never forget”

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 27th, 2017 at 12:33 am and is filed under Blog by Manny Pacheco. You can follow any comments to this post through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

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