June Foray
Birthday:
Birthplace:
Springfield, Massachusetts, USA
While few filmgoers or TV fans have ever seen June Foray, a healthy majority of them are quite familiar with her work. June Foray was one of the leading voice artists of the golden age of animation, working with both the Warner Bros. animation department and the Disney studios, and later gained her greatest fame as the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel on the classic television cartoon series The Bullwinkle Show. Born in Springfield, MA, on September 18, 1917, Foray began her career as an actress at the age of 12 -- appropriately enough, by appearing in a radio drama at a local station in Springfield directed by her voice teacher. By the time Foray was 15, she was a regular at Springfield's WBZA, and two years later she was living in Los Angeles, hoping to break into the big time as an actress. At 19, Foray was both writing and starring in a radio series for children, as Miss Makebelieve, and soon became a frequent guest performer on a number of top-rated radio shows, working with the likes of Danny Thomas and Jimmy Durante. It was in the mid-'40s that Foray finally broke into the movies, but while she scored occasional onscreen roles (most notably as High Priestess Marku in the exotic drama Sabaka), she soon discovered there was a ready market for her vocal talents in Hollywood. Her first animation voice work was for Paramount's Speaking of Animals comedy shorts, in which animated mouths were superimposed on live-action footage of animals. The Speaking of Animals shorts spawned a series of records for children, recorded with a number of other noted voice actors, including Daws Butler and Stan Freeberg. The records made her a hot property with casting agents for cartoon voice work, and she found herself working for many of the biggest names in animation. For Chuck Jones at Warner Bros., Foray provided the voice of Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, as well as the cackling Witch Hazel and dozens of other female characters. She recorded voices for several Tex Avery cartoons at MGM, as well as some Woody the Woodpecker shorts for Walter Lantz. And she made her debut at Disney as Lucifer the Cat in Cinderella. With the rise of television in the 1950s, a new market for cartoons appeared, and Foray's career kicked into high gear. She was cast as Rocky on The Bullwinkle Show, and also voiced a number of female characters on the series (most notably the villainous Natasha); she was also the voice of sweet-natured Nell Fenwick on the show's side series Dudley Do-Right. Foray stayed busy doing voice work on a number of other cartoon series as well, including Hoppity Hooper, Yogi the Bear, George of the Jungle, and the new Tom and Jerry shorts produced for TV in 1965. In addition, Foray did occasional work on The Flintstones, though she was passed over for the role of Betty Rubble after voicing her in the show's pilot. (Foray also appeared, uncredited, as the voice of Cindy Lou Who in Chuck Jones' classic animated version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas). In the 1980s and 1990s, at an age when most actresses would consider retirement, Foray was still one of Hollywood's busiest vocal talents, recording voices for everything from The Smurfs and Garfield to Duck Tales and The Simpsons. Foray also made a return to prestigious big-screen animation as the voice of Grandmother Fa in Mulan, and revisited her most famous role with vocal work in 2000's mixture of live-action and computer animation, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In semi-retirement (though she still takes the occasional job that strikes her fancy), Foray is an active member of the International Animated Film Society, as well as the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Highest Rated Movies
Filmography
MOVIES
RATING | TITLE | CREDIT | BOX OFFICE | YEAR |
---|---|---|---|---|
No Score Yet | Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas |
|
— | 2006 |
No Score Yet | The Legend of Sasquatch |
|
— | 2006 |
56% | Looney Tunes: Back in Action |
|
$21.1M | 2003 |
No Score Yet | Looney Tunes: Reality Check |
|
— | 2003 |
No Score Yet | Looney Tunes: Stranger Than Fiction |
|
— | 2003 |
No Score Yet | The Baby Looney Tunes' Eggs-Traordinary Adventure |
|
— | 2003 |
No Score Yet | Tweety's High-Flying Adventure |
|
— | 2000 |
49% | Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas |
|
$259.1M | 2000 |
43% | The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle |
|
$0.5M | 2000 |
86% | Mulan |
|
— | 1998 |
43% | Space Jam |
|
— | 1996 |
27% | Thumbelina |
|
— | 1994 |
No Score Yet | Boris and Natasha |
|
— | 1992 |
No Score Yet | Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland |
|
— | 1992 |
7% | Problem Child 2 |
|
— | 1991 |
88% | DuckTales: The Movie - Treasure of the Lost Lamp |
|
— | 1990 |
0% | Problem Child |
|
— | 1990 |
97% | Who Framed Roger Rabbit |
|
— | 1988 |
No Score Yet | Daffy Duck's Movie: Fantastic Island |
|
— | 1983 |
No Score Yet | The Looney, Looney, Looney Bugs Bunny Movie |
|
— | 1981 |
No Score Yet | Faeries |
|
— | 1981 |
No Score Yet | Scruffy |
|
— | 1980 |
No Score Yet | Bugs Bunny's Looney Christmas Tales |
|
— | 1979 |
No Score Yet | Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure |
|
— | 1977 |
No Score Yet | Mowgli's Brothers |
|
— | 1976 |
No Score Yet | White Seal |
|
— | 1975 |
No Score Yet | Cricket in Times Square |
|
— | 1973 |
100% | The Phantom Tollbooth |
|
— | 1970 |
No Score Yet | Horton Hears a Who! |
|
— | 1970 |
73% | Frosty the Snowman |
|
— | 1969 |
75% | The Little Drummer Boy |
|
— | 1968 |
No Score Yet | Mouse on the Mayflower |
|
— | 1968 |
100% | How the Grinch Stole Christmas |
|
— | 1967 |
No Score Yet | The Man Called Flintstone |
|
— | 1966 |
No Score Yet | Death of a Salesman |
|
— | 1966 |
No Score Yet | Sabaka |
|
— | 1953 |
97% | Cinderella |
|
— | 1950 |
No Score Yet | A Chipmunk Christmas |
|
— |
TV
RATING | TITLE | CREDIT | YEAR |
---|---|---|---|
No Score Yet |
Baby Looney Tunes
2002-2005
|
|
|
81% |
Teen Wolf
2011-2017
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
The Looney Tunes Show
2011-2013
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries
1995-2002
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Family Guy
1999
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Married...With Children
1987-1997
|
|
|
85% |
The Simpsons
1989
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
DuckTales
1987-1990
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
The Smurfs
1981-1989
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Little House on the Prairie
1974-1983
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
The Pink Panther Show
1969-1971
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Lost in Space
1965-1968
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Tom and Jerry
2021
|
|
|
82% |
The Twilight Zone
1959-1964
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
The Flintstones
1960-1966
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
I Love Lucy
1951-1957
|
|
|
100% |
Rocky and His Friends
1961
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends
1981-1983
|
|
|
No Score Yet |
The Looney Tunes Show [INACTIVE]
|
|
|
Quotes from June Foray's Characters
Grandmother Fa: | Who spit in her bean curd? |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | You Can Count On Bullwinkle And Me |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | You can count on Bullwinkle and me. |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | I KNEW we shouldn't have left him! We haven't been apart in thirty-five years |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | I KNEW we shouldn't have left him! We haven't been apart in thirty-five years. |
Eddie Valiant: | (Says to a weasel) Without that gun I had no fun. I'll kick you in the... (gets hit in the head with a plate). |
Eddie Valiant: | [says to a weasel] Without that gun I had no fun. I'll kick you in the... [gets hit in the head with a plate] |
Roger Rabbit: | Nose! |
Wheezy Lena Hyena: | Nose? That doesn't rhyme with walls! |
Eddie Valiant: | No, but this does. (He kicks him right in the BALLS). |
Eddie Valiant: | No, but this does. [he kicks him right in the BALLS] |
Mulan: | Would you like to stay for dinner? |
Grandmother Fa: | Would you like to stay forever? |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | [Bullwinkle is going for a walk in the woods] But Bullwinkle, there aren't any more woods! |
Bullwinkle J. Moose/Narrator: | You don't have to tell me, I'm the Chairman for the Frostbite Falls Society of Wildlife Conversation. |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | You mean "wildlife conSERVation." |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | You mean 'wildlife conSERVation.' |
Bullwinkle J. Moose/Narrator: | What did I say? |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | You said "wildlife conVERSation"! |
Rocky the Flying Squirrel: | You said 'wildlife conVERSation'! |
Bullwinkle J. Moose/Narrator: | Well, somebody's gonna have to start talking about these things. |