Remembering June Foray, Legendary Voice Of Rocket J. Squirrel and Natasha Fatale & Annie Awards Founder, Dead At 99

Moose and Squirrel of ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ fame. An entire generation never tired of watching Bullwinkle try to pull a rabbit out of his hat.

Today all of Toon Town mourns. Voice acting legend June Foray, widely known to generations of cartoon lovers as the First Lady of Voice Acting and the driving inspiration behind animation’s biggest night, The Annie Awards, died today at the age of 99. She was indomitable and seemingly indestructible, working into her 90s and winning an Emmy award in the midst of her 9th decade. Accepting the reality of her death will take some time.

The news was confirmed and made public on Facebook by a longtime close family friend, Dave Nimitz, writing, “With a heavy heart...I want to let you all know that we lost our little June today at 99 years old.” The cause of death is still to be announced. Foray would have celebrated her 100th birthday on September 18.

June Foray at the Hollywood
premiere of Warner Bros. feature
‘Happy Feet Two’ in 2011.

ASIFA-Hollywood president Jerry Beck also shared the news, “On behalf of ASIFA-Hollywood, which June was a founder of, we are mourning the passing of animation’s best friend,” in a statement posted to Facebook Thursday night. “She has touched so many lives -- her voice was so many classic cartoon characters -- her efforts to create ASIFA, to maintain the Academy’s Oscar for Best Animated Short -- and her leadership in crafting the category of Best Animated Feature. She was one of a kind. A trail blazer, a great talent and a truly wonderful person. We will never forget her.”

June Foray (the early years).

Foray’s long career in animation began when the Walt Disney studio approached her to play Lucifer the cat in Cinderella, which led to a series of gigs with the studio — mostly uncredited. She had a starring role in the 1952 Donald Duck short Trick or Treat as Hazel the Witch, a name and occupation combination that would prove quite popular in her character roster. Through the 1950s, Foray also worked with animation icons Tex Avery, Walter Lantz and Chuck Jones. Her best known work was in Jay Ward’s The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, which ran from 1959 to 1964, playing Rocket J. Squirrel and Russian minx Natasha Fatale. Foray also worked on other Ward toons, playing Nell in Dudley Do-Right, Jane in George of the Jungle and Marigold in Tom Slick.

June is surrounded by stellar talents in this 1995 shot: Stan Freberg, with whom she worked so memorably on comedy records and radio, and longtime friends Ray Bradbury and Norman Corwin. It’s hard to believe they’re all gone now.

Born June Lucille Forer in Springfield, Massachusetts, Foray was 12 years old when she landed her first job in a local radio drama, and by the age of 15 was doing regular radio voice work when her family relocated to Los Angeles — in addition to frequent appearances on popular shows, she had her own Lady Make Believe show. Foray also worked at Capitol Records making children’s albums and comedy records.

Foray voiced countless other characters in Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Her hundreds of acting credits include other popular characters like Jokey Smurf and Mother Magoo in the Mister Magoo series. She also lent her voice to the iconic “Chatty Cathy” doll, and later voiced the demonic doll Talky Tina in the “Living Doll” episode of The Twilight Zone in 1963. Continuing to work well into her 90s, the leading lady of animation reprised her classic roles and took on fresh challenges for a range of projects like The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.

She was one of the leading voice actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood theatrical animation, and later transitioned to television series, commercials, movie dubbing, and narration, with a career that lasted into the current decade. Among the hundreds of cartoon characters she brought to life, her iconic roles included Rocky the Flying Squirrel and the villainous Natasha Fatale in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and its spinoff Boris and Natasha, Witch Hazel (who first appeared in Chuck Jones' 1956 cartoon "Broom-Stick Bunny") and Granny in the Looney Tunes theatrical shorts, Nell Fenwick in The Dudley Do-Right Show, Ursula in George of the Jungle, Lucifer the Cat in Disney’s Cinderella, Cindy Lou Who in How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Ma Beagle and Magica De Spell in Ducktales, and Grammi Gummi in Adventures of the Gummi Bears. June loved what she did and loved to work, even if she didn’t always get credit. She dubbed telephone operators and other incidental voices in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, among many other feature films.

Foray also voiced several roles in feature films, including a mermaid in Peter Pan, Grandmother Fa in Disney’s Mulan, and Wheezy and Lena Hyena in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, in addition to reprising her roles as Witch Hazel and Granny in the 1996 Warner Bros. hybrid feature Space Jam.

She worked well into the 21st century, reprising her role as Rocky in 2000’s The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and the 2014 DreamWorks Animation short film directed by Gary Trousdale. Her performance as Mrs. Cauldron on The Garfield Show earned her a Daytime Emmy in 2012, and she was awarded the TV Academy’s prestigious Governor’s Award in 2013. Her many achievements have also been marked with a Walk of Fame star and a Hall of Fame Award from the World Animation & VFX Summit. A documentary about her life and career, The One and Only June Foray was released in 2013.

Her prolific body of work as a voice actor often drew comparisons to her colleague Mel Blanc, but animation director Chuck Jones set the record straight once when he said, “June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc is the male June Foray.” What her many fans may not know is that she chaired the short subject branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for many years, and fought tooth-and-nail to keep animated shorts a part of the annual Oscar broadcast. Though she was diminutive in size, she stood her ground year after year. Animators will forever be in her debt.

I’ll update this post over the next few days as remembrances, tributes, and obits become available. In the meantime, to learn more about her life and work, I recommend picking up her autobiography Did You Grow Up with Me, Too?

You can watch an in-depth Archive of American Television interview with Foray about her voice acting career here.

Watch Foray discuss voicing Rocky and Natasha on The Bullwinkle Show in the video player below:

The longevity and range of June Foray’s career in animation is legendary, but what also shouldn’t be overlooked is her tireless and selfless boosterism of the animation art form. In addition to her career as a performer, Foray played a key role in the animation industry as one of the founders of ASIFA-Hollywood, and when she was president of the organization in the 1970s, she started the Annie Awards, an event which recognizes achievement in animation, that will celebrate its 45th anniversary next year. I loved her many voices, including the raspy old-lady she often did in Jay Ward’s Fractured Fairy Tales. She revealed one day that it was a parody of character actress Marjorie Marin—which made perfect sense once she pointed it out. She also played a more benign Granny in Warner Bros.’ Tweety and Sylvester cartoons.

Foray was an avid supporter of the medium and worked tirelessly to have animated films recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. She had been working in animation for about 20 years when the casual group that would eventually become ASIFA began to set up. ASIFA West Coast was founded in the 1960s, comprised of Foray, Carl Bell, Les Goldman, Herbert Kasower, Ward Kimball and Bill Littlejohn. Beginning as a small dinner event in 1972, The Annies grew into the annual gala recognizing top talent in animation that continues to this day. “I was thinking that there were the Grammys, the Tonys, the Oscars, but nobody recognizes animation,” she said in an interview with Variety. The first event gathered some 400 attendees to honor Max and Dave Fleischer. In 1995, the Annies created a juried award named after Foray, which was established to recognize individuals who have made significant and benevolent contributions or charitable impact to the art and industry of animation, and she was its first recipient.

Further, the reason the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has an animated feature Oscar category is due in no small part to her decades-long lobbying effort. She was on the Academy’s board of governors for 26 years, and spent the majority of those years pushing to have the Academy recognize feature animation, which they finally did in 2001 when the first award was bestowed on DreamWorks Animation's Shrek. June represents the best of a golden era of animation—not to mention radio and comedy records, where she also left an indelible mark. (This would be a perfect time to listen to Stan Freberg’s “St. George and the Dragonet” and “Little Blue Riding Hood.”)

Three of the great vocal talents of our time: Jeanette Nolan, Janet Waldo, and June Foray, at a luncheon given by Bob Ahmanson in 1995.

Foray advocated for animation to be taken seriously as an art form long before such thoughts had entered mainstream consciousness. “Animation has come out of its adolescence,” she told The Los Angeles Times back in 1965. “It has grown into a medium for adults…Along with this is the fact that animation has become an art form. It has become an industry filled with people who at one time would have become painters, sculptors, writers for other fields. Animation once was considered a stepchild of the motion picture industry. It has become an industry in its own right.” She was a great talent and, as anyone who knew her can testify, a force of nature. She deeply cared about animation and devoted herself to promoting the medium.

This year, as we get set to begin our annual coverage of awards season, it’s worth remembering that a big reason we even have so much attention directed toward animation nowadays is due to the efforts of a single remarkable woman, the one and only June Foray. Farewell, Rocky… Adios, Natasha… we’ll never forget you or the woman who gave you life.

Rest In Peace, June Foray. Your spirit, kindness and wit are greatly missed.

June Foray at a Warner Bros. recording session with Chuck Jones (left) and Mel Blanc, ca. mid-1950s.

June Foray recording “St. George and the Dragonet” with, from left, Walter Schumann, Daws Butler, and Stan Freberg, 1953.

June Foray with San Diego Comic-Con founder Shel Dorf, 1973.

June Foray dancing (center) at a Format Films holiday party, ca. early-1960s.

June Foray with (l. to r.) Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Art Babbitt at the 3rd Annie Awards ceremony, 1974.

In addition to her voice acting, Foray was one of the mermaid models in Disney’s “Peter Pan.” In this photo, Foray is on the right.)

June Foray collage courtesy of Everett Peck via Facebook