The Sexy Cow

If June Foray were with us, she’d be celebrating her 101st birthday today. Alas, she died just before she could turn 100.

Let’s celebrate for her instead. Here’s a syndicated newspaper column from February 17, 1962. Misspelled names have been left intact.

She's Tops Doing Voice of Sexy Cow
By CHARLES WITBECK
King Features Syndicate
Hollywood—There's a little lady in Hollywood with a unique talent—when it comes to sounding like sexy cows no one in town can touch her.
Tiny, 4-feet, 11-inch June Foray is a member of a small group of small actors, all ex-radio performers who make a good living doing voices for commercials and TV animated cartoon shows.
Because of their size, these talented voices were in deep trouble in the early fifties when television almost destroyed radio. Even with lifts in their shoes the voice actors were too small to land parts in motion pictures and panic set in.
A few like Mel Blanc, June Foray and Dawes Butler sneaked in TV commercials, but jobs were scarce. Today, with the booming commercial field and TV cartoons, the voice actors are reaping gold.
June Foray, for instance, does three or four recording sessions a day. She's a sexy cow for a dairy commercial, then she switches to a tired housewife dying for a couple of cans of chow mein. June plays so many parts, she finds it hard to distinguish her voice sometimes. "People who know me can spot me," she says, "but I have trouble myself."
On the Sunday night Bullwinkle show June plays Rocky the hero, and Natasha, a sexy, evil woman, a Charles Addams type. Recently fans saw June in the flesh on the Stan Freberg Chinese New Year's Eve Show as a nasal sounding housewife in a chow mein commercial.
June is a Freberg follower and rolled off the female voices in "St. George and the Dragonet" and "The United States of America." Walt Disney will page her to do little girls and then he'll change pitch for a Calvin and the Colonel TV episode. June even dubs voices for dramas like Thriller when a call goes out for a New England telephone operator.
It all began in Springfield, Mass. when her mother enrolled June in dramatic school. "At 6 I had a low, sexy voice," said June, so she was told she had talent.
June's idea of heaven is to be 5 feet 3. "I stopped growing at the age of 13 and I developed such an inferiority complex," she said. "I felt people took me out because they felt sorry for me. I felt sorry for me. I didn't want to be petite."
In radio she met other small people and finally stopped worrying about her height. The group worked steadily changing voices many times a day on different shows like "Smile Time" with Steve Allen, "Corliss Archer," "Red Ryder" and "Screen Director's Playhouse."
A few of the taller radio actors like Hans Conreid, Bea Benedaret and Mel Blanc didn't have to stand on boxes and jumped into the infant television business.
Today, this same group comprises the voice business in Hollywood. Not a single newcomer has cracked the tight little ring. "It's a shame," admits June, "but there's no proving ground for youngsters with talented voices. The old pros have a corner on the market."
There's a reason for this. Costs have risen and ad agencies want voice actors who can, do a number of parts and do them quickly and efficiently. The pros, like June, can be counted on for a quick, effortless, expert job. Why bother to experiment when sufficient talent is on hand? This applies not only to agencies, but to TV studios and record companies.
There is a good deal to be said on voice acting benefits. Money from residuals comes pouring in, the work is varied and abundant, and an actor has all the privacy of an average citizen. This last part pleases Miss Foray no end. Married to writer Hobart Donovan, June lives quietly and says with a smile that she's quite an intellectual. Her moments away from a mike, she spends reading or gardening.
"I'm really a woman of the soil," she said. Maybe that's why I can sound like a sexy cow."