Hurray (Again) For Foray

What?! It’s been more than a year since a post about June Foray? Well, we’ll fix that.

I love June’s voices in Jay Ward’s “Fractured Fairy Tales,” which are among the funniest cartoons ever made for television. But I like her voices in everything. I’m so glad Earl Kress and Mark Evanier got together to help her write her autobiography. She couldn’t have had two better people work with her.

June recorded a pile of voices for a Pogo TV special in 1969. To attract viewers, she was asked to do some advance publicity. Here’s a syndicated story that appeared in newspapers starting May 17th that year.

A GIFT FROM GOD
Vocals Without Music
By STAN MAAYS
IF JUNE FORAY had grown a few inches taller, she might not have become the queen of female voices for the past 20 years.
"Because I am short—not even five feet—I had no dignity to command on a stage," declare Miss Foray. "I couldn't play leading ladies, so I had to concentrate on character roles. I began playing old ladies because it didn't matter how I looked."
Miss Foray reluctantly allowed as how maybe "it's God's gift" that she has the ability to do so many things with her voice. This realization first came to her when she was a 12-year-old drama student. A teacher admitted, "I can't teach you anything more."
"Now that I'm older it doesn't matter any more," she shrugs. I'll be working a lot longer than some because I can do a very young voice (she slipped into a breathless ingenue) or an old voice like Marjorie Main (a perfect impression) and not be concerned how I look on or off camera."
MISS FORAY'S remarkable talents will: be displayed in The Pogo Birthday Special, the first animated musical special to be based on Walt Kelly's comic strip. NBC-TV airs the half-hour show May 18.
Miss Foray does Pogo, Miss. Mam'selle Hepzibah and a "half dozen other voices that have one-liners." The voices of Pogo's other Okefenokee Swamp pals—Porky Pine, Basil, Howland Owl and Churchly La Femme are supplied by Walt Kelly, Chuck Jones and Les Tremayne.
With her old friend Stan Freberg she has worked on a number of albums and radio commercials. In cartoons she has done Bullwinkle, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker; she has worked for Walt Disney, Jay Ward and Hanna and Barbera; the credits are endless. She's the sexy voice in Bandini commercials, plus voices in Uniroyal, United Air Lines, Kellogg, Cheerios, Mustang and Dodge plugs on radio and TV.
When the late Ann Sheridan gallantly tried to finish the season of Pistols and Petticoats but just couldn't carry on any more, it was June Foray the producers turned to for help. She rerecorded dialogue Miss Sheridan's weakened voice couldn't sustain. Her lip-sync of Miss Sheridan's voice was perfect.
IF THERE'S a chink in Miss Foray's talented armor it's a minor one.
"I'm a lousy singer," she announced, unabashed. "I have a good ear, except when it comes to singing. Bobbie Gentry asked me to sing as a character voice in her new album and it took some doing on my part.”
Miss Foray, who lives in a nearby suburb with her husband, writer Hobart Donavan, has joined the growing list of non-smokers. Her keen ear began detecting a loss of range in her voice control four years ago.
"I figured it wasn't worth it if it affected my voice," she reports. I'm very fortunate to be the master of my vocal chords, but I wasn't when I was I smoking.”

Let’s give you one from May 18, 1969, courtesy of the Pittsburgh Press. I suspect some of the quotes came from a UPI wire story earlier in this year.

A Long Hop . . . From Okefenokee To NBC
By Vince Leonard
Press-TV Radio Editor
THIS is why National Porkypine Week and why not? There are so many people pushing so many products that they've had to double up the varieties to get them in the 52—all the weeks the year allows.
Chuck Jones is responsible for Porkypine Week. He's co-producer with cartoonist Walt Kelly of "The Pogo Special Birthday Special" today at 8:30 p.m. on Channels 6, 7 and 11. "Pogo" is a daily and Sunday feature in The Press. Mr. Jones just responded to a complaint made by Porkypine that there is "No National Porkypine Week . . . No, nor no Porkypine Day . . . or hour . . . or second even."
The special, which lifts the characters out of the Okefenokee and onto NBC-TV, centers on the fact that Porkypine is “a norphan" coming from a long line of norphans, so all his friends in the swamp band together to throw him a surprise party.
"Everybody has a favorite holiday," Jones said, "so why not celebrate anytime you choose? And, as the folks in the swamp reason, ‘Why not?’ Actually the year is so cluttered up with holidays now there isn't room for vacations."
Meanwhile, the voice of Pogo belongs to June Foray, who has provided vocal chords to thousands of inanimate cartoon characters.
In fact, June Foray is the Marnie Nixon of the cartoon set.
Her voice ranges from bass to soprano and she speaks for both Rocky and Natasha in "Bullwinkle."
"When I was hired to play Pogo," she said, "the director said he wanted a straight, young Southern boy voice about 12 years old. We decided against a hokey cartoon character for him."
Miss Foray, in addition to doing Pogo's voice, will dub for six other characters in the show, including Miss Mamselle Hepzibah, a petite skunk with a French accent.
"I can do every accent and dialect in the world," said Miss Foray, who has worked for Disney, Hanna-Barbera, MGM, Walter Lantz and Jay Ward.
"It's a very specialized field. There are about 100 people in the business, but only six or seven of us work regularly."
Hopping around from studio to studio, therefore, June Foray could probably make good use of a pogo stick.

The Pogo special was re-run the following February and June was, once again, profiled in various newspaper publicity pieces. You can read a couple in this post.