June Foray (born June Lucille Forer; September 18, 1917 – July 26, 2017) was an American voice actress and radio personality, best known as the voice of such animated characters as Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Nell Fenwick, Lucifer from Disney's Cinderella, Cindy Lou Who, Jokey Smurf, Granny from the Warner Bros. cartoons directed by Friz Freleng, Grammi Gummi from Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears series, and Magica De Spell, among many others.
Her career encompassed radio, theatrical shorts, feature films, television, comedy and children's recordings – particularly with Stan Freberg – video games, talking toys, and other media.
Foray was one of the early members of ASIFA-Hollywood, the society devoted to promoting and encouraging animation. She is credited with the establishment of the Annie Awards, as well as being instrumental in the creation of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2001. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honoring her voice work in television.
Chuck Jones was quoted as saying: "June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc was the male June Foray."
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Early life
June Lucille Forer was born on September 18, 1917, in Springfield, Massachusetts, one of three children of Ida (née Robinson, 1893–1975) and Morris Forer (1886–1958). Her mother was of Lithuanian Jewish and French Canadian ancestry, and her father was a Jewish emigrant from Odessa, Russian Empire. The family resided at 75 Orange Street, Forest Park. As a small child, Foray first wanted to be a dancer, so her mother sent her to local classes, but she had to drop out due to a case of pneumonia. Her voice was first broadcast in a local radio drama when she was 12 years old; by age 15, she was doing regular radio voice work.
Two years later, after graduating from Classical High School, she moved with her parents and siblings to live in Los Angeles, near Ida's brother, after Morris Forer, an engineer, fell on hard financial times.
Acting career
After entering radio through the WBZA Players, Foray starred in her own radio series Lady Make Believe in the late 1930s. She soon became a popular voice actress, with regular appearances on coast-to-coast network shows including Lux Radio Theatre and The Jimmy Durante Show.
In the 1940s, Foray also began film work, including a few roles in live action movies, but mostly did voice over work for animated cartoons and radio programs and occasionally dubbing films and television. On radio, Foray did the voices of Midnight the Cat and Old Grandie the Piano on The Buster Brown Program, which starred Smilin' Ed McConnell, from 1944 to 1952. She later did voices on the Mutual Broadcasting System program Smile Time for Steve Allen. Her work in radio ultimately led her to recording for a number of children's albums for Capitol Records.
For Walt Disney, Foray voiced Lucifer the Cat in the feature film Cinderella, Lambert's mother in Lambert the Sheepish Lion, a mermaid in Peter Pan and Witch Hazel in the Donald Duck short Trick or Treat. Decades later, Foray was the voice of Grandmother Fa in the 1998 animated Disney film Mulan. She also did a variety of voices in Walter Lantz Productions' Woody Woodpecker cartoons, including Woody's nephew and niece, Knothead and Splinter. Impressed by her performance as Witch Hazel, in 1954 Chuck Jones invited her to work on Warner Bros. Cartoons. For Warner Bros., she was Granny (whom she had played on vinyl records starting in 1950, before officially voicing her in Red Riding Hoodwinked, released in 1955, taking over for Bea Benaderet), owner of Tweety and Sylvester, and a series of witches, including Looney Tunes' own Witch Hazel, with Jones as director. Like most of Warner Bros.' voice actors at the time (with the exception of Mel Blanc), Foray was not credited for her roles in these cartoons. She played Bubbles on The Super 6 and Cindy Lou Who, asking "Santa" why he's taking their tree, in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. In 1960, she provided the speech for Mattel's original "Chatty Cathy" doll; capitalizing on this, Foray also voiced the malevolent "Talky Tina" doll in the Twilight Zone episode "Living Doll", first aired on November 1, 1963.
Foray worked for Hanna-Barbera, including on Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, The Jetsons, The Flintstones and many other shows. In 1959, she auditioned for the part of Betty Rubble on The Flintstones and voiced the character in the original pilot episode, opposite Mel Blanc who voiced Betty's husband, Barney Rubble, but Bea Benaderet was eventually cast in the role; Foray described herself as "terribly disappointed" at not getting to play Betty. Foray eventually made a guest appearance on The Flintstones as the voice of Granny Hatrock in the episode "The Bedrock Hillbillies".
Later career
In 1996 and 1997, Foray won the Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Female Performer in an Animated Television Production for her work in Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries. In 2000, Foray returned to play Rocky the Flying Squirrel in Universal Pictures' live-action/CGI animated film The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, co-starring and produced by Robert De Niro. On Season Three, Episode One ("The Thin White Line") of Family Guy, Foray again played Rocky in a visual gag with a single line ("And now, here's something we hope you'll really like!"). Foray voiced the wife of the man getting dunked ("Don't tell him, Carlos!") in the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. In 2003, she guest starred as the Jay Ward inspired villain Madame Argentina in the Powerpuff Girls episode, "I See a Funny Cartoon in Your Future". During this time, Foray also had a regular role, reprising Granny on Baby Looney Tunes and also Witch Hazel in an episode of another Warner Bros. Animation series Duck Dodgers. In October 2006, she portrayed Susan B. Anthony on three episodes of the podcast The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd. In November 2009, Foray appeared twice on The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack: in one episode as Ruth, a pie-maker trapped in Bubbie's stomach, and in another episode as Kelly, a young boy having a birthday party and as Kelly's Mom and Captain K'Nuckles' kindergarten teacher.
In 2011, she reprised her role as Granny in Cartoon Network's The Looney Tunes Show, which was her last regular gig. That year, she received the Comic-Con Icon Award at the 2011 Scream Awards. She also appeared as Granny in the theatrically released Looney Tunes short, I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat, which was shortlisted for Academy Award consideration.
In 2012, Foray received her first Emmy nomination and won in the category of Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program for her role as Mrs. Cauldron on The Garfield Show. She thus became, at age 94, the oldest entertainer to be nominated for, and to win, an Emmy Award. In 2014, Foray reprised her role as Rocky in a Rocky & Bullwinkle short film, which served as her final voice role.
In September 2013, she was honored with the Governors Award at the 65th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. That same year, she reprised her role as Magica De Spell in the video game DuckTales: Remastered.
Personal life
Foray married Bernard Barondess in 1941. The marriage ended in divorce. She met Hobart Donovan while appearing on The Buster Brown Program on radio. He was the show's main writer and had also written The Buster Brown comic book. Foray and Donovan were married from 1955 until Donovan's death in 1976. She had no children by either marriage.
In 1973, Foray was an organizer of a meat boycott in response to President Nixon's freezing of meat (and other) prices. As a result of this, Foray was included in the master list of Nixon's political opponents, commonly known as Nixon's Enemies List.
Death
Foray died of a cardiac arrest at a hospital in Los Angeles, California, on July 26, 2017, at the age of 99. She had been in declining health since an automobile accident in 2015.
