She's a Piano Top and an Underwater Pen

Is it possible to pick a favourite voice of June Foray?

There are so many of them, and likely all kinds we have never heard because of the countless commercials she was hired to do.

It’s a treat to run into articles about her. She must have entertained millions of people so any recognition is welcome, especially in the 1950s and ‘60s when almost all voiceover people were anonymous (unless they appeared in cartoons).

Her first screen credit for animation came from Walter Lantz, despite her long career at Warner Bros. She worked for MGM, Format Films (The Alvin Show) and, well, I’ll stop there because long lists are the province of other places on the internet.

Here’s a short column from the Copley News Service that appeared in papers in 1963. Jay Ward would be interested to know he didn’t come up with Fractured Flickers. And Foray’s predecessor at Warners, Bea Benaderet, gets her name spelled wrong again.

ACTRESS PROFITABLY FATED TO BE HEARD, NOT SEEN
By DONALD FREEMAN
HOLLYWOOD, July 4 (CNS)—Although she would dearly love to be entrusted with a serious dramatic role, it is June Foray's enviable financial fate to be summoned whenever producers need the voice of a cat or a dog or a parrot. Or, for that matter, a visitor from the moon or a pen that's so happy to be writing under water or the evil Natasha on the "Bullwinkle" show or any of a hundred voices that comprise this gifted actress' repertoire.
This coming season, for instance, she will be heard as Bunny, girl friend to the title character in the new "Beetle Bailey" cartoon series.
She’ll be several voices on Hanna-Barbera's new "Fractured Flickers" show. And she'll be all kinds of voices on a variegated roll call of commercials, some of them easy assignments, some not so easy.
"But then, we voice people do have a certain—ah, artistic freedom," Miss Foray pointed out the other day. "They ask you to be the sound of the top of a piano being polished—who knows what the top of a piano sounds like? Who knows what a girl from the moon sounds like? In a word, we wing it."
• • •
MISS FORAY, A CHARMING package who stands about a whisper over five feet tall, is one of a handful of voice specialists in Hollywood, There are perhaps seven or eight performers available who can rattle off at least 10 voices each. In that department the list begins and virtually ends with such people as Mel Blanc, Alan Reed, Bea Benadaret [sic], Daws Butler, Paul Frees, Dave Barry and Jim Backus (who is, incidentally, the Little Old Winemaker) and Miss Foray herself. Because of this scarcity and the great demand for a diversity of voices, the pay is quite ample.
"Financially — let's face it — it is utterly fantastic," Miss Foray noted. "What does 'fantastic' mean? Well, if you make more money than the president of the United States that, to me, is fantastic. Back in radio I used to make a nice living wage but 15 years ago if someone would have said, 'June, you're gonna end up with a tax problem,' I'd have howled with idiot laughter."
• • •
RARELY ON TELEVISION does Miss Foray emerge as her own pert self although last season she did just that on an Arthur Godfrey special, demonstrating some of her voices. She has supplied six voices for "The Flintstones," for example, and all the female voices, from Natasha to Nel Fenwick, on the "Bullwinkle" show.
If duty calls, she can do the voices of cats, chickens, roosters, parrots, lambs, goats, donkeys, crows and on and on in the bird-animal kingdom. She does eerie sounds that would frighten Alfred Hitchcock.
Name a dialect and Miss Foray can rattle it off in any voice you ask—Irish, Cockney, Swedish, French, Russian, sectional accents from every section of the land from Southern to Brooklyn to Eastern to Texas.
Miss Foray herself is native to Springfield, Mass., and started in radio at age 12.
In private life, Miss Foray is married to the writer, Hobart Donovan.

June Foray is one of those people who makes me smile when I hear her voice and feel happier afterwards. That’s actually not a bad accomplishment for the top of a piano.

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.

Hens, A Witch and Fertilizer

What’s that, you say? I haven’t written about June Foray for a while?

Yes, you’re right.

If you’re akin to me, whenever you hear her voice, happiness and maybe even excitement pours over you, and you exclaim “It’s June Foray!” A simple pleasure in life, it is, but a pleasure nonetheless. I’ve always liked her work.

I unexpectedly caught her on a broadcast of the Henry Morgan variety show on ABC which emanated from the West Coast (Morgan was based in New York). She wasn’t credited, but you can’t miss June Foray.

Here’s an article on her we haven’t passed along before. It’s from the July 9, 1959 edition of the Valley Times. This is around the time Jay Ward was plying her with martinis to convince her to be part of the cast of a cartoon series in the works about a moose and squirrel. It sums up much of her career to date, though it skips past her work on radio with Steve Allen and on television with Johnny Carson, before both of them became huge TV stars.

PET FANCIER
Tiny Actress In Big Voice Roles
By DAVE HOLLAND
The radio script called for several men’s voices and several women’s voices, so the producer called for several men but only one woman.
She was June Foray of Woodland Hills, an unusually talented actress who easily can produce the voices for any age-any type female any age-any character for which the script might call.
As an example of her artistry, Miss Foray once conducted a three-minute conversation with herself on radio and did such an able job that the listeners never even suspected that they weren’t listening to two women.
It's rather incongruous to imagine a big, screeching voice of a hideous old witch coming from a woman as tiny as Miss Foray, who, if she emerged soaking wet from her new swimming pool, wouldn’t weigh 100 pounds.
Yet, she can accurately mimic sounds ranging from sultry Tahitian beauties to friendly cats, such as she’s doing now, furnishing the voice for “Clementine, the talking cat,” in Jerry Lewis’s new Paramount picture, "Visit to a Small Planet."
Through another of her movie accomplishments, Miss Foray has endeared herself to movie-goers with her portrayal of “Granny” in the Warner Brothers cartoon series, “Tweety.”
Dabbles In Paint
Miss Foray loves to dabble with oil paints in doing portraits and with house paints as she and her writer-husband, Hobart Donovan, portray do-it-yourselfers around their new Woodland Hills home. She began her professional career as a child radio actress in her home town of Springfield, Mass.
Coming to Hollywood, Miss Foray met Donovan, whom she married in 1955 when he was producer-writer-director of the popular NBC “Smilin’ Ed McConnell” radio show in 1945.
Then followed weekly live performances for seven years with the Smilin’ Ed show, during which time Miss Foray did all the female parts, sharing the microphone with Hans Conreid [sic], William Conrad, John Dehner and Marvin Miller, among others.
Five-Year Contract
Signing a five-year contract with Capitol records, lending her talents to those of Mel Blanc, Stan Freberg, Daws Butler, and Pinto Colvig, the voice for "Goofy, Miss Foray continued her interesting career which includes appearances on the radio programs of Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante and the late Fanny Brice.
It was during her stay with Capitol that she did all the female voices on Stan Freberg’s recording of “St. George and the Dragonette.”
Miss Foray’s talents constantly are in demand for radio and TV commercials and she has worked for the Disney Studios in such features as “Cinderella,” in which she portrayed “Lucifer, the Cat,” and in “Peter Pan,” doing the parts of the old Indian squaw and two of the three mermaids.
Owns Pets
Since she does so many impersonations of cats and dogs in her work, it’s only natural that she owns a cat and two dogs.
“Our cat is a very independent ‘Thomas’ named Henry,” Miss Foray said. “One of the dogs is a dachshund named Katrina, and the other is a great big champion mongrel named Mulligan. We call him Mulligan because he’s such a delightful mixture. My husband and I just love him.”
And the public just loves Miss Foray, because she’s such a delightful mixture of the voices it knows so well.

A very brief look at some newspaper stories for 1959 reveals Foray voiced a mouse in a Shirley Temple Storybook episode, voiced Adam Cain on 77 Sunset Strip, provided voices for some Red Cross public service announcements, and looped dialogue for a heroine with the wrong accent on Rawhide (at $150 for two hours). There were several voices for Bar-Sep Productions’ The Sun Sets in Hell. June was part of the English-language dubbing team for the Russian animated feature The Snow Queen.

She found time to appear on You Asked For It and on the local L.A. TV Red Rowe Show. Oh, and she was also involved with the Hollywood Chapter of AFTRA.

Then there were commercials. Let’s find out about one campaign from The Hollywood Reporter of Jan. 29, 1959. The column on the right is from Broadcasting magazine, May 18, 1959.

ON THE AIR
by HANK GRANT
IT ISN’T THE PRINCIPLE—IT’S THE MONEY OF THE THING . . . There’s been plenty of amused comment re that anonymous, sultry-sexy voice on radio’s Bandini fertilizer commercials . . . But this doesn’t bother June Foray (yep, it’s she) who’s even more amused at actors who “snobbishly” turn down blurb offers . . . Actually, June has turned down straight thesping roles, rather than lose a blurb commitment . . . Reason? . . . “Money!” says the petite 95-pounder, “And when acting ceases to be a business, I’ll get out of it! I rarely make less than four figures for a filmed TV commercial, just a couple of hundred for three days week on a drama . . . And yet some actors I know, many of them momentarily strapped, actually instruct their agents never to submit them for commercial jobs!”
June points to Stan Freberg, Mel Blanc and Gloria Wood as three examples of performers who’ve gained, rather than lost, dignity from their blurb chores . . . “All of us can spot the ‘actor’ who’s grudgingly accepted a blurb job. His condescending air is bad enough but his deaf ear is too much—this on a one-minute commercial that many times costs as much as a half-hour film! . . . As for ‘name’ stars who fear loss of prestige, what the difference between a printed endorsement with their picture in a magazine ad and a spoken product-push on air?” . . . Parting June Jab: “For my first radio commercial, I got five dollars and all the cod liver oil I could drink—Now I can buy my own cod liver oil and even pick up the tab for the boys in the back room!”

What about Warner Bros. cartoons released in 1959 (remember, voice sessions could have been done a year earlier)?


Apes of Wrath, directed by Friz Freleng


Really Scent, directed by Abe Levitow


A Broken Leghorn, directed by Bob McKimson


A Witch's Tangled Hare, directed by Abe Levitow


Unnatural History, directed by Abe Levitow


Tweet Dreams, directed by Friz Freleng


People Are Bunny, directed by Bob McKimson

Oh, yes, we referred to a moose and squirrel cartoon show that debuted in 1959. Here’s an all-too-short interview where June talks about it.

Let's Hear From June Foray

The world loves June Foray.

And because the world loves June Foray, allow me to post two feature newspaper feature stories about her from February 1970.

The Pogo TV special was being rerun that year, so it appears June went out on the publicity trail or the producers lined up interviews with her. The first one concentrates on money, the second from the King Features Syndicate delves more into her career.

By the way, if you check this blog and over at the Yowp blog, you’ll find more Foray fun. Click here, here and here for starters.

June Foray Finds Small Fortune In Doing Voices For TV Cartoons
By MARILYN BECK
TV Time Syndicate
Hollywood
POGO POSSUM and Mademselle Hepzibah have two important things in common. The same man, cartoonist Walt Kelly, created them, and the same woman, June Foray, gave them voices.
June Foray considers it an honor that she was chosen to be the voices of those famous cartoon characters for their transition from cartoon strip to television in "The Pogo Special Birthday Special." Aired last year, the program will be rerun on NBC Sunday, 8:30-9 p.m.
"Actually, I had been hired to narrate the character of Hepzibah, the French skunk. But then Walt Kelly decided he'd like me to handle both roles."
Actually, Walt Kelly and producer Chuck Jones should feel rather honored that June found the time to work on the special. For she's the actress who's discovered in the last 20 years that there's a lot more gold to be panned in Hollywood standing behind the cameras instead of in front of them.
SHE'S the gal that just about everyone hears, but few ever see. She plays Rocky and Natasha on the "Bullwinkle" show, Granny in the "Tweety Pie" series, Jerry in "Tom and Jerry." She has handled countless TV commercial assignments, and has imitated the voices of scores of stars in movies when there are sound track difficulties.
For, as she pointed out, "My end of the business is fantastically lucrative." An actress works all week doing a guest shot on a series, is paid a flat sum, and then gets limited residuals from a maximum of six reruns of that show.

"I, on the other hand, will spend less than two hours taping the voice for a commercial, get paid residuals for 10 reruns of the spot. And, well, it's easy to end up making from $6,000 to $8,000 for that few hours work."
SHE STARTED in the business doing radio voices as a teenager, was signed by Capitol Records to narrate children's records, and was soon hired by Disney Studios to handle the voices for many of their animated characters.
"There were strictly mercenary reasons that made me decide to specialize in behind-the-scenes work," admitted the pint-sized lady who's become a giant-sized talent in the industry.
But, she admits, too, there are some other advantages to staying away from the camera lens.
"I try to keep myself up on fashions, and wear my hair in the latest styles, but only because I want to I don't have to, and believe me, that's a nice difference!
"I don't have to worry about costume changes. I could show up for work in slacks if I liked. And, nicest of all, I'll never have to go through the horrible worries of most actresses: fear that you might grow too old for a part, that a line upon your face means you've aged yourself out of the business."
THE ONLY thing June must worry about is her voice, that remarkable voice that can shift from a Russian accent in the middle of a sentence, to the sexy one which she portrayed on the Bandini commercials, to the twang of a teenage Southern lad which Walt Kelly decided is the proper sound for Pogo Possum.
Among the countless narration chores she's handled has been the squeaky, saccharine-tinted lisp of the Chatty Cathy doll. Millions of children and their parents have grown accustomed to the recitals of charmin' Chatty.

She’s Pogo Miz Bus O' And Cathy
By HARVEY PACK
TV Key Writer
NEW YORK — If you own a TV set you've heard June Foray’s voice. In fact you may have heard June eight or ten times during the same day without ever actually listening to her normal speaking voice.
June Foray is the leading lady in a small clique of Hollywood performers whose vocal characterizations are in constant demand for commercials and cartoons. Her biggest TV hit, “The Pogo Special Birthday Special," starring the familiar Walt Kelly creations and featuring the many voices of June Foray will be telecast again on NBC Sunday.
For one thing June plays the title role—Pogo. But why hire a large staff of actors when Miss Foray manages to come up with just the right tones for Mlle. Hepzihah. Miz Bug and five other assorted roles. She’s a one woman mob scene and her voice has been her fortune ever since she began in radio as a teen-ager in a children’s series entitled “Lady Make Believe."
This big and precious voice belongs to a charming and literate lady. The valuable larynx is housed in a petite 4-foot-11 frame but boasts a range of 6 to 70 plus animal voices capable of satisfying the imagination of youngsters.
A lot of you may even have June’s voice hiding in your youngster's toy closet. She is the voice of the famous Chatty Cathy doll which says “I love you” and other assorted things to little girls who pull its string.
Miss Foray made the master tape for the doll for a flat fee. But when her husband novelist Hobart Donovan caught a TV commercial for the toy which used that master tape to help sell the doll the Donovans went to court and the voice of Chatty Cathy was awarded commercial residuals.
“I’m rather pleased about Chatty Cathy" she says. “Of course I have a special adult version in which Chatty says a few naughty things after she admits she loves you."
For a change of pace and a chance to be a ham, June occasionally accepts roles in TV shows where she is seen, even though wasting a full week on an episode generally costs her in recording fees. She did a Mexican lady on a recent "Green Acres," and has been seen in sketches on the Red Skelton Show.
In addition to the "Pogo" special where she does seven voices, June's cartoon credits include Jerry in "Tom and Jerry," Rocky and Natasha in "Bullwinkle," and starring roles in "Drummer Boy," "Frosty the Snowman" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
Not only does the Hollywood voice clique earn huge fees but they frequently have so much fun they go overtime because of breaking up over dialogue."
With a lot of the animators the job is such a ball you think you're stealing when you get paid. The big problem is turning down jobs when you're overbooked because if they request me and I can't make it they may have to postpone the recording session. I don't know whether I'm that good . . . maybe they're just used to me."
There are times when the schedule can get out of hand. One of June's favorites is Stan Freberg who always uses her talents on his records and commercials. The trouble is that Freberg works weird hours.
"He's a night person. Once I had a day job and his office put in a call for me for 7 p.m. and, for Stan, I accepted. After recording all day I showed up at seven . . . no Stan. He arrived at nine but he hadn't written the script yet. We worked all night which meant I had been recording for almost 24 consecutive hours. That's what happens when you work for a genius."
No matter how many voices she's doing in the same show she always manages to come up with the right one at the right time which is a tribute to her professionalism. Her list of credits attests to her ability. And, as for talking to the real June Foray . . . she's such a nice lady we never even asked her to do one of her voices because we enjoyed her natural one.

She Doesn't Sound Like an Old Essex

Yes, she was known for cartoons. And, yes, she was known for being Talky Tina. And, yes, she appeared on records and radio with Stan Freberg. But June Foray did so much more than this during her career.

June’s vocal qualities were in demand to loop dialogue. In other words, after a film was completed, June would be called in to dub over the voice of someone on screen for whatever reason.

Here’s a syndicated newspaper column that began appearing around November 20, 1959 that talked about her dubbing work.

Rigging Isn't Just for the Quiz Shows
Body is the Body Of the TV Star ... But Her Voice is the Voice of 'Ghost'
By HAL HUMPHRIES
HOLLYWOOD Since the national sport at the moment is exposing everything on TV which isn't strictly on the up-and-up, you may as well have the facts about some of those sexy starlets emoting on your home screen.
Male viewers, especially, must have noticed that these young glamor queens usually possess soft, sultry voices.
As an example, in a recent Laramie episode a well-upholstered heroine looked into a cowpoke's eye and purred, "You've got to take me with you," with a come-hither voice Mae West would envy.
In real life, as it happens, this particular damsel's vocal chords sound like the starter on an old Essex.
THE DULCET TONES you heard were those of a diminutive ex-radio actress by the name of June Foray.
Miss Foray is a voice bootlegger. And she is so busy dubbing her repertoire of voices for TV "actresses" that she has difficulty finding time for her stock in trade TV and radio commercials.
During the past year the vari-voiced Miss Foray has been used to cover up vocal deficiencies in just about every Western on TV, besides some of the top adventure shows, including 77 Sunset Strip.
ONE OF HER MOST recent jobs was "looping" (dubbing) all of the dialogue for a heroine on CBS' Rawhide. The gal in the role had a shape like Marilyn Monroe, but she talked with a Brooklyn accent thicker than Mabel Flapsaddle's.
Miss Foray sat in a projection room, adjusted a pair of earphones on her, then waited for each of Miss Glamour's scenes to be repeated on the screen. Cue lines were marked on the film, and as each one came up, Miss Foray read aloud each line of dialogue.
It is a tricky process, because Miss Foray must "lip-sync" her words to match the lip movements of the girl on the screen. Her voice is then duly recorded on tape and later inserted into the film.
NOW I CAN HEAR someone out there in the audience asking, "Why did they hire this dame with the Brooklyn accent in the first place?"
That, dear viewers, must be answered very delicately. There are cases where the fresh young starlet is a "close friend" of eomeone who pulls a lot of weight on the show.
In other cases, Miss Glamour has a voice like a fishwife's but has other talents, as noted, which compensate for that shortcoming.
THERE ARE TIMES, too, when a voice deficiency is not noticed until too late. Perhaps Miss Glamour has a leaky lisp, which is not detected until the first "dailies" or "rushes" are run off. Production can't be held up while a new girl is cast, so Miss Glamour lisps her way through the show.
An emergency call is put in for Miss Foray or one of the other half-dozen other good voice-dubbers in Hollywood, and Miss Glamour is given a siren's voice to match the rest of her equipment.
MISS FORAY charges $150 for the first two hours of her services! $350 for an eight-hour day.
At this rate she frequently makes more money than the sex-wagon who is borrowing her voice.
NO ONE ELSE doing this work has the range of Miss Foray. For an episode of "The Deputy" she recently dubbed the voice of a small boy, who during rehearsal had picked up his mother's dialect as she coached him in his lines.
Stan Freberg uses Miss Foray for many of the characters in his records and commercials.
"I used to eat my heart out, want to be an actress that people could see," she says, "but now I'm happy just going to the bank."
WITH TV'S SUDDEN passion for doing nothing to deceive its audience, I'm sure that Miss Foray will soon be getting billing at least "Body by Simone LaRue; Voice by June Foray."

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."

She Worked for Cod Liver Oil

June Foray made more people laugh than any other woman in animated cartoons.

The title of her autobiography—Did You Grow Up With Me, Too?—couldn’t have been more appropriate. She was far from being the first voice actress in animation, but she’s probably the best known, thanks to the constant exposure of her Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1950s and ‘60s, and the great joy she and her comrades freelancing for the Jay Ward studio gave to people for years.

And that’s just a teeny sampling of her work, but it’s the work you probably remember best and love.

There was once a late-night TV host named Steve Allen. He had a gang of stooges—Don Knotts, Tom Poston, Louis Nye. Before television, Allen had a radio show. He had a gang of stooges. It was a gang of one—June Foray. Radio is where all the great cartoon voice people came from.

June spoke with the Los Angeles-area magazine Radio Life several times. This story dates from her time with Allen and his co-host, Wendell Noble, on a show called “Smile Time” on the Mutual network. It was written on March 17, 1946. In honour of what should have been June’s 100th birthday, allow us to reprint it. The fuzzy photos accompanied the article.

JUNE FORAY, “Mighty Midget”
She’s Just as Proficient with a Needle As She is at the Mike — Just as Clever Under a Car Hood as with a Paint Brush
Monday-Friday, 2 p.m.
MBS-KHJ-KGB

RADIO’S “mighty midget”—that’s June Foray, four feet eleven inches of as many different radio voices as ever came out of a mike. June runs the gamut of all of them on KHJ-Mutual Don Lee’s “It’s Smile Time” show heard Mondays through Fridays at 2:00 p.m.—even to the dog that always barks at the end of each show.
Every feminine voice that’s heard on the show is June’s. She can do anything from ingenues to grandmothers, through and including lady wrestlers. She’s one of the best boy juveniles in radio, and she’s played so many of these parts that Hollywood’s younger masculine radio contingent has threatened to form a union to keep Foray out. On a recent “Murder Is My Hobby” program, for instance, June played the lead supporting role—that of a little boy aged eleven.
Foray’s talent doesn’t confine itself to radio alone. She’s just as proficient with a needle as she is at a mike; just as able underneath a car hood as she is with a sewing machine; just as efficient with a paint brush as she is with a wrench.
She’s been sewing ever since she can remember . . . makes many of her own clothes, designs her own hats to add to her height. She loves wacky bonnets, and nothing pleases her better than to walk along Vine street with a new “stopper.”

Learned Accidentally
She got into the automotive repair business by the sheerest accident. June used to drive an old Model A, whose choke kept getting disconnected from the carburetor. One night on Serrano avenue (she’ll never forget it), she couldn’t get the thing to start. It was during the war and service-station attendants were being distinctly ungallant to lady motorists in distress. At least, the only one June could find didn’t care whether she got home or not. So June poked around under the hood herself and after about thirty minutes of fiddling, found out where the trouble was and got her car started. After that, she kept right on doing her own repair work, and she’s one girl who knows the difference between a piston ring and a set of spark plugs.
June’s pint size necessitates the use of a riser on most of the shows she works. On “It’s Smile Time,” she uses a riser AND a high stool, sharing her mike with Wendell Noble’s vocal numbers. When she plays on “Red Ryder,” however, it’s a cinch; Little Beaver’s mike is just the right height. Usually she does half-caste Indians on the Western show.
She's been working in radio since 1930; groomed for it ever since she was a little girl. When she was six, her mother thought her voice was too low, marched her off to a dramatic school to bring it up to a nice ladylike pitch. It was that early training in throwing her voice all over the scale that gave her the ability to imitate anything and everything. Famed as the best dialectician in Hollywood, June is the voice behind “Sniffles,” “Oswald,” and many another favorite cartoon character. She was the parrot in Spike Jones’ “Chloe” when the song was filmed; the hiccough of Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake . . . the sneeze of Carole Thurston . . . and all kinds of animals. Her hardest imitation was of whooping cough for “Shepherd of the Hills.” She spent an entire day in the contagious wards of the County hospital, learning how.
Pill Pay

Hard work has never bothered June. Her post as a regular on the “Smile Time” show came because she had no objections to getting up at 5:30 a.m. when the show was aired at 7:15 a.m.
Her first radio appearance in Boston was on a program sponsored by a cod liver oil pill company. For three hours of rehearsal and a half hour dramatic show, the cast was paid $5 apiece and all the cod liver oil pills they could eat.
“The sponsor used to come to the show regularly and make us take the pills,” June remembers. “I usually managed to get down two.”
At home, she likes to tinker with a paint brush and a hammer and saw. She does a wonderful trick with coffee jars—paints the tops and bottoms, puts a decal on the clear glass between, and uses them as canisters in her kitchen. Not just decorative . . . you can see what’s in which!
Finally, she has a mad passion for politics—writes letters to her congressman, spends her time during elections doing house to house campaigns—and reads every book she can find on a discussed subject.
But unfortunately, even though she has learned just about everything else, she’s never learned not to take Wendell Noble and Steve Allen seriously. Her one complaint is that she’s a perfect foil for every gag they pull. She never knows what to expect next, and even when they dress up an old routine into something new, she still falls for it, hook, line and sinker.
“I’ve been with the show so long I should learn . . . I should learn,” she sadly shakes her head. “But I’m always the straight woman . . . always!”

Entertainer and voice expert Keith Scott says June was Oswald in the rabbit’s final cartoon, The Egg Cracker Suite (1943) and had completely forgotten about it until he reminded her. She then recalled how Lantz had to hire someone else to sing for Oswald. Her Sniffles cartoon was The Unbearable Bear (released April 1943), but she played the annoyed bear wife. Keith dug through the Warner studio archives and found Miss Foray was paid a whopping $25 to cut a couple of lines.

One of June’s most famous lines from cartoons was as Rocky saying “Now, here’s something we hope you’ll really like.”

June Foray gave us a lot to really like.

Hurray For Foray

In 1940, there wasn’t an awful lot on television. There were no networks. The FCC still hadn’t figured a standard broadcast transmission signal or frequencies. Yet, on Wednesday, April 6, 1940, there was an hour-long (live, of course) variety show on W6AXO in Los Angeles. Just about all the acts are long forgotten. They included the Lee Sisters, Barron and Blair, and hosts Hugh Brundage and Bill Gordon.

Oh, and at the end of the first half, an actress performed a monologue called Lady Tilbury Entertaining With Hay Fever.

Her name was June Foray.

She was entertaining people before that primitive TV appearance. As a review of that show in Billboard pointed out, she was a regular on KECA radio with her kid stories. The review also claimed she “is a definite personality for tele.” I imagine it wasn’t thinking of her career being more off-camera rather than on.

We think of June as being a top cartoon and commercial actress, and her work on radio and records with Stan Freberg. We think of her, Twilight Zone excepted, in comedy. We don’t think of her an evil fire-cult leader. But that’s what she was in the feature film Sabaka. The movie was a mess. It was originally titled Gunga Ram but RKO complained in September 1952 that was too close to its Gunga Din. So the title was changed to The Hindu and whole new sequences were quickly written, included all the ones involving Foray. The movie is actually available on YouTube for the morbidly curious. Here’s how Harrison’s Reports of January 29, 1955 reviewed the film.

"Sabaka" with Boris Karloff, Nino Marcel, Reginald Denny and Victor Jory
(United Artists, February; time, 81 min.)
Produced in India and photographed in an unidentified color (prints are by Technicolor) [it was shot in Eastman Color], this is a rather amateurish program adventure melodrama that may get by with the youngsters and uncritical adults. Its story about a young elephant boy's efforts to avenge the murder of his sister by a fanatical cult of fire-worshippers is juvenile, but it is actionful, and the scenes of wild animals stampeding through a forest fire are impressive. The proceedings, however, are not easy to follow, and most of the time one is in doubt as to what is going on. Boris Karloff, Reginald Denny and Victor Jory are the only members of the cast who are known to American audiences, but their roles are comparatively brief even though they are starred. The color photography is only fair at best; much of it is fuzzy: —

Nino Marcel, a courageous young elephant trainer in India, loses his sister and brother-in-law when they are burned to death in a forest fire started by June Foray, High Priestess of a maniacal cult of fire-worshippers, and Victor Jory, her ruthless aide. The young mahout swears vengeance against the murderers and he sets out to break up the cult. But the Maharajah of Bakore, with whom he was on friendly terms, disbelieves the boy's story, and Boris Karloff, the Maharajah's general, opposes the young man on the grounds that he is interfering with military matters. The boy manages to capture the High Priestess and one of her followers, but they protest that they are merely entertainers. The maharajah censures the lad and releases them. Determined to prove that he was right, the boy follows the High Priestess into the jungle and eventually comes upon her as she and her cult perform their strange rites before a huge idol, named Sabaka. The priestess orders him to be seized and burned alive, but with the help of two pets — an elephant and a tiger, the lad gains his freedom, brings about the Priestess' death and puts an end to the cult by destroying the idol. This feat restores him to the good graces of his ruler.
It was written, produced and directed by Frank Ferrin. Harmless for the family.

Her work with Freberg made her a natural for comedy commercials. Broadcasting magazine of February 25, 1963 outlines an interesting series of spots.

Tongue-in-cheek spots selling staid ‘Times’ on West Coast
The newspaper strike has deprived New Yorkers of their daily newspapers, but the Western edition of the New York Times is flourishing, thanks in part to a radio campaign which began mid-January in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The one -minute spots, created by Carson/Roberts, Los Angeles, are currently broadcast by KNX and KFI Los Angeles; KNBR, KCBS and KGO San Francisco in an initial 13 –week subscription campaign.
Most of the spots are based on the adventures of Mr. Peebles, the mailman, who delivers the New York Times to Western subscribers. Typical is his conversation with Mrs. Dumont, who is so anxious to get her Times that she kisses him when he hands it to her with the rest of her mail. When she raves about all the New York Times' "world-famous columnists like James Reston and Arthur Krock and Sulzberger and Taubman and, oh, just everybody." The postman asks which is her favorite.
"Well," she says hesitatingly, "I like Taubman on the theatre. But Rupert's favorite is James Reston."

"Rupert?," asks Mr. Peebles, "I thought your husband's name was Cyril."
"It is," she responds.
"So who's Rupert?"
"My prize mynah bird."
"You mean . . . ?"
"Yes. I line Rupert's cage with the New York Times, Reston's column facing up."
"You mean to say you use the most distinguished newspaper in the world to line a mynah bird's cage?"
"That's right. But when that bird talks—you listen!"
In another of the spots, a little girl amazes Postman Peebles by telling him that the New York Times he is delivering is not for her mother, but for herself. "What's so strange?," she asks. "After all I'm six years old . . . Can I help it if I dig James Reston and Arthur Krock?"
The embarrassed postman replies: "Certainly not, but I thought little girls just liked to play with dolls," and the little girl says: "We do," and shows him her talking doll. "Does she say 'I love you' and 'Go bye bye?,' " he asks.
She snaps back: "Are you kidding? Listen—."
There is the sound of a doll ring pull and the doll's voice says "Shall we discuss the Congo situation?" "You see," the little girl explains, "she reads the New York Times too."

Ah, but you want to read something about cartoons. Here’s a syndicated column that appeared in papers starting around July 1, 1962. Around this time, June got some big exposure in an Arthur Godfrey special on strange voice occupations. She seems content to have left behind roles like the high priestess of the Sabaka cult.

Actress Has No Face
By HANK GRANT
HOLLYWOOD — We were sitting in a booth at the Hollywood Brown Derby with the most sought-after actress in town June Foray. The petite redhead, despite the fact that she commands a six figure salary every year and is heard oftener on TV and radio than any other actress, is also unrecognized wherever she goes. Across the way, two youngsters were getting autographs from Hugh O'Brian.
On an impulse, we shouted to the youngsters: “How would you like to meet ‘Rocky the Squirrel’?”
“Where, where?” they yelled, but when we pointed to June, they walked away, convinced they had been the victims of a prank.
“That's the story of my life,” June said, for indeed she was the voice of “Rocky” and also “Natasha” in the “Bullwinkle Show.” It's a Hollywood axiom that whenever a peculiar “voice” is needed, June gets the first call.
There's hardly a cartoon company in Hollywood that doesn't utilize her services. Hardly a cartoon has come out of Walt Disney without June's voice in it and, aside from “Bullwinkle,” she has been on the weekly payroll of “Woody Woodpecker” and “Bugs Bunny.”

ADD THE FACT that her off-camera voice is heard currently in over two dozen filmed commercials and there isn't a day or night you can escape hearing her on TV. In Hollywood, she is known as “the girl with over 500 voices.”
“The girl with 500 voices and no face,” she corrected. "I'd been doing voice characterizations since I was a child. I started as a professional at the age of 12 on a radio station in Springfield, Mass. My versatility with voices just came naturally without premeditated design or training.
“My burning ambition was to become an actress. When I was old enough I came to Hollywood. I got a few acting jobs right away and started getting them steadily. But when they found I could do crying babies, cat voices, and even invent plausible voices for non-speaking animals and rodents, they never let me act again. But I worked every day, every week, for three times the money I would have made as an actress.
“FOR QUITE some time, I felt sorry for myself because I had none of the acclaim other professional actors get. But one day, I was called to use my voice for an actress who'd gotten laryngitis. I do a lot of that now. Then I realized that I was paid twice as much for just four hours work as that well-known actress was paid for a week."
“‘June,’ I said to myself, ‘you're a vain nut. Here you've been working steadily every week since 1944. The actresses who sign autographs and take all the bows would give their right arm to be in your shoes.’ That's what I said to myself and I straightened out. I still get an envious twinge now and then, but I just remind myself that being faceless is my fortune.
“I've worked as many as three different shows in one day. What other actress can do that? I never have to worry about the public getting tired of me. If one of my voices wears thin, I still have 500 others!”
Just then, the two youngsters who had walked away returned and said: “If you’re ‘Rocky,’ prove it.” Without betraying a single facial muscle, June lifted her voice into the familiar squeaky falsetto of the famous squirrel. Seeing June’s radiant reaction to the awed and now-convinced youngsters, it occurred to us that no one, no matter how financially secure, can learn to live with anonymity and like it!

It would be pointless to list all the great things in show business that June Foray has done. I’d get comments like “You forgot....” Even she’s forgotten some of them; there have been so many. You can read some in this post and this post and this post. Read great stories on Mark Evanier’s site; I’ll bet you he has one today.

She was one of the greats.

The Month of June (Foray)

If there was anyone on the face of the Earth who could possibly have the distinction of winning an Emmy award for the first time at age 94, it would be June Foray.

And she did it tonight.

She won for Outstanding Performer in an Animated Program.

One would think that she would have been nominated long before this. After all, her career pre-dates the Emmys. It even pre-dates network television, considering her years on radio. The trouble is she’s a voice-over artist, working off-camera in commercials and guesting with cartoon ensembles, and that doesn’t really fit any of the Emmy categories.

There is no possible way you have spent your life without hearing June’s voice. Interestingly, her roles that everyone remembers today are not found in a nice little biography in an Associated Press story of November 3, 1967—Witch Hazel for at least two cartoon studios; Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha and Nell Fenwick for the Jay Ward studios; Talky Tina on “The Twilight Zone.” Oh, and Cindy Lou Who in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” I’m sure you have your own favourites.

Remarkable Vocal Range
June Foray Specializes In Dubbing For Babies, Birds, Stars - Witches, Too
By GENE HANDSAKER
HOLLYWOOD (AP) – She’s a tiny thing, with auburn hair, sparkling eyes and a remarkable vocal range—for babies and birds to sexy dames, doting grandmas and cackling witches.
For 20 years a frequent cry from Hollywood producers with feminine-voice problems has been, “Get June Foray.”
She earns $250 an hour and 11 probably Hollywood’s top woman practitioner of the obscure trade listed in her modest 2 lines in the Motion Picture Almanac: voice specialist.
Good On Imitations
Ann Sheridan died before she could rerecord dialogue for her last television show that extraneous noises had ruined in the sound track.
Miss Foray, after listening carefully to Miss Sheridan’s voice, did the rerecording matching the words to Ann’s lip movements.
“Sometimes the producer will add dialogue after the star has gone, say, to Europe,” said June. “It’s cheaper and quicker to have me do it than bring her back.
“And a lot of young actresses whom I can’t mention do a lousy job and they call me in to pull them out of the soup by replacing their voices. How did they get the job in the first place? Because they look good.”
Its Constant Effort
On a “Rawhide” she rerecorded the entire dialogue of one week’s guest star. It taxes Miss Foray, who works almost constantly, to remember all the voices she supplies, especially in television.
“I’m Axis Sally in ‘12 O’clock High,’ Knothead and Splinter on ‘Woody Woodpecker,’ and I’m all over the dial on the Saturday cartoon shows.”
Her voice changes as she describes various roles: “I do French girls, Cockney accents, Svenska, and ah do Suth’n dialects.”
The secret is “having a good ear and flexible vocal cords.”
Born in Springfield, Mass., Miss Foray came to Hollywood with her parents at 17 and started a local radio show, writing and playing all the parts, then graduated to network radio.
She lives in suburban Woodland Hills with her writer husband, Hobart Donavan; two terrifying friendly great Danes weighing a combined 345 pounds and a withdrawn, 14-year-old cat named Henry.
Miss Foray supplies nearly all the witches’ voices used in Hollywood. Pat Buttram once asked her to do one over the telephone when he had a local radio program.
“When I got through doing that cackling, hee-hee-hee voice,” she recalls, “there were 15 people standing around the phone booth wondering what this nut was doing.”

When you think of June, you don t think of her subbing in for other actors. The TV Scout column of October 10, 1960 revealed she did it for Sherry Jackson in a episode of “Surfside Six” to make the character sound sexier. Here’s another Associated Press piece from January 24, 1960.

Seldom-Seen Actress Gets Top Salary
By JAMES BACON
AP Movie-TV Writer
HOLLYWOOD (AP)—One of the best paid actresses in Hollywood is seldom seen on the screen.
She is attractive June Foray, who dubs voices for other actresses—sometimes the leading lady.
In one film, a well known actress was cast opposite a deep-voiced male star.
“When the picture was completed,” June recalls, “the producers found that audiences would have laughed the leading lady right out of the theater. Her voice was way too high and squeaky for the lower registers of the male star.
“I was called in to dub the whole picture.”
June makes plenty from movies and television but her biggest income is from commercials on radio.
“I make as much for a half hour’s work on a radio commercial as I could for a full day’s work as a visible actress,” she says. “Sure, it does something to your ego but when those residual checks start coming in every time the commercial is replayed, your ego is soothed so nicely.
“At those prices, I can’t afford to be seen on the screen."

You can read a couple of other old newspaper stories about her HERE and HERE.

In honour of June’s Emmy win, here she is in an interview with the Archive of American Television, in snippets discussing her career. There are 11 of them; I hope they’ll play one after the other.

June Foray

There might be a debate over who is the best cartoon voice actress of all time, but I’ll bet you there would be almost unanimous, universal consent over who is the most beloved.

Can it be anyone else but June Foray?

I have decided, for no particular reason other than I love her work, to declare this June Foray Day on the Tralfaz and Yowp blogs. You’ll be able to read old newspaper clippings about June on both, stories written before she was tipsy-fied by Jay Ward and Bill Scott into accepting what’s probably her most popular role as Rocket J. Squirrel in 1959.



Newspapers before 1950 mentioned June on rare occasion, generally in radio listings for a show called “Smile Time.” It was a daily, 15-minute comedy broadcast that debuted December 31, 1945 on the Mutual network and starred Steve Allen and Wendell Noble. Soon after the show started, one radio column noted (no doubt assisted by a network handout):

June Foray, star of “Smile Time”, can do most anything with her vocal chords—she has been the parrot in Spike Jones’ “Chloe”, the hiccup of Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake, and can imitate every animal sound imaginable.

Earlier in the year, one newspaper noted her role on “A Man Called Jordan” as “an exotic German spy” (Hmmm. Shades of Natasha?) and as a 13-year-old Arab boy. And, the following year, she was hired to play a pain-in-the-butt tenant of Stu Erwin in the long-forgotten “Phone Again Finnegan” on CBS radio.

Like almost everyone else in radio, June made the jump to television. Oddly enough,
Steve Allen didn’t use her on his television show; maybe it was due to the late hours. June did appear on an early Johnny Carson show (April 20, 1953) based in Los Angeles. The big-name guest was Fred Allen.

Syndicated columnist Al Morton had this cute little biography of June on August 6, 1953. The reference to little old ladies is interesting, given her later career at Warners.

One of the most surprising voices in show business belongs to a pint-sized, throaty girl who says she always wanted to be a leading lady but ended up a character.
She’s June Foray, who can deliver any one of a thousand voices, human or animal, at the drop of a cue. She’ll be exhibiting her vocal talents over ABC-TV on Saturday, Aug. 22, when “Smilin’ Ed’s Gang” makes its debut.
Her own description of her unusual talent range is “anything that walks or crawls.” It all started when June was six. Her mother thought her voice was too low and marched her off to a dramatic school to “elevate her sounds to a more ladylike pitch.” This instigated, instead, such an interest in the theater that June is still with it.
Throughout her schooling, June did summer stock. By the time she reached her early teens, she has tried every role from the town moppet to Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth—with a specialty of being very good in portraying “little old ladies.”
June has done voices for many cartoons and juvenile record albums. She was a cat in Walt Disney’s “Cinderella,” and imitated two mermaids and an old squaw in “Peter Pan.”
June, dark-eyed, size eight and four feet 11 inches tall, is an apartment dweller whose favorite companion is Katrina, a two-year-old Daschshund. June says Katrina has a fairly man-sized bark, but not “half as good as mine.”
Incidentally, one of her favorite pastimes is barking at the neighborhood dogs before she leaves home in the mornings. More than once she has had the whole canine' populace of her block in an uproar—not to mention the neighbors.

The United Press concentrated on her film work in this 1951 story.

VOICE SPECIALIST
Screams for Living
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD, March 26 (U.P.)— Tiny June Foray, who screams for a living, recommended screaming today for anybody desiring a sexy voice and a slim tummy.
Miss Foray, a “voice specialty” actress, is never seen on the screen. But when the celluloid heroine lets loose a blood-curdling yell, it’s often Miss Foray on the sound track, not the star.
By now, she says, she has “a very firm diaphragm.” Her own voice isn’t husky, but she says a certain kind of screaming can make anybody’s that way.
Lauren Bacall got her boudoir voice by screaming on orders from her discoverer, Howard Hawks.
“You can get a husky voice by screaming incorrectly, with your throat,” she explained. “You strain your throat muscles, what I call ‘stroking the glottis.’
“When I scream I keep an open throat and yell from the diaphragm. That’s good exercise for the stomach.”
Miss Foray has the job of making movies “shriller than ever” because, she said, movie stars are too embarrassed to.
“When a movie actress screams, out comes a little ‘eek.’ They never let loose, so their scream has to be redubbed on the sound track,” the pretty screamer said.
“I guess movie stars are afraid of straining their voices or embarrassed. You have to be be uninhibited to scream.”
June looks like she’d never got more than a whisper out of her pert four feet 11 inches. But she’s hollered on movie sound tracks for glamour queens like Paulette Goddard, Joan Caulfield and Veronica Lake.
She’s also sneezed for Constance Collier, made whooping cough noises for a boy in “Shepherd of the Hills,” sobbed for Olivia De Havilland’s baby in “To Each His Own,” and is now doing seven different children’s voices in Walt Disney’s “Peter Pan.”
On the radio she’s an actress who screams for herself. For NBC’s “Smilin’ Ed McConnell” children’s adventure program she plays everything from a space siren to a horrible witch to a cat, sometimes all on the same program.
“I use different types of screams to register fright, surprise, anger and pleasant surprise,” she said. “The hardest was for a movie, ‘Burma Surgeon.’ I screamed for one hour and got a headache.”

June helped in the war effort in Korea. The United Press wrote about her travails in a story for newspapers of December 16, 1954, revealing how a star’s life is different than ours’.

USO Troupers Head Overseas
By ALINE MOSBY
HOLLYWOOD — (U.P.) — Terry Moore and other stars get most of the glory when Army planes take off today and next week to overseas, but there is many an unsung heroine in the troupe.
At no pay, a loss in salary and considerable expense, singer June Foray, for example, had to do the following to get ready for the USO trek that brings Yuletide cheer to GIs far from home;
Take tetanus, typhoid, small pox, diphtheria and cholera shots; get a passport, do her Christmas shopping, mail Christmas cards, rehearse her act for two weeks with other members of the 71-performer troupe, do her regular work at Capitol Records, attend Army briefings, leave her cat at cat motel, make her costume, buy winter underwear, pay her bills, insure her fur coat, postpone work dates until she gets back in three weeks, make out a will, and get her hair bleached.
Typical of Most.
“But it’s worth it,” laughed June as she packed her suitcase before stepping on the plane en-route to Iceland, France and Germany.
“When the Army told us the boys appreciate our giving up our Christmas to entertain them, we felt kind of happy to do something good for them.”
June, a little-known singer and mimic who records cartoon voices for records and movies, is typical of most of the show people making the trip. She's a veteran of
10 years of “Tom and Jerry” movies, radio, TV and “Woody Woodpecker” records, and was asked by USO to work up a comedy-imitations act.
To Look Feminine.
The troupers get $10 a day expense money and their board and room, but, except for the union musicians, no salary. Terry, Marilyn Monroe, Bob Hope and other stars have received headlines for their trips to Army bases. But June and other troupers wade through snow, work two or three shows a day, travel by Jeep and get little sleep with no recognition.
“Forrest Tucker, the star of our group, won’t let us girls wear slacks,” June added. “He thinks the GIs will want us to look feminine.”
Disc Jockey Johnny Grant, another unsung hero of the USO troupe, left today on his seventh overseas trip to entertain homesick GIs at forgotten bases in the Orient.

Why did June get into voice acting in the first place? Let’s hear from her in her own words, written in the Pasadena Independent of July 9, 1959.

Girl Behind Voice Likes Her Calling
By JUNE FORAY
A small number of people in Hollywood earn their living in what amounts to a really offbeat fashion. I’m one of them.
I specialize in imitating all sorts of voices for TV and radio commercials, motion picture cartoons and sometimes for big-name stars whose dialogue, for some reason or other, did not record well. My voice is heard by millions of people daily and to them I’m more vocal than visual as I seldom appear before the cameras.
From time to time, I have been seen on the Jack Benny and other television shows, but principally my work is confined to doing all types of voices—from babies to witches and then some.
Why have I specialized in this field? Well, for one reason I’m rather short to play leading roles. And another is that I have developed an ability to imitate all sorts of people am in this area, there isn’t as much competition as in the straight acting field. Economically, too, it has its rewards and I’m frank to admit that money is always desirable when you earn it by delivering an effective and conscientious job.
My voice has been heard, impersonating all sorts of characters, on such cartoons as
“Woody Woodpecker,” and “Bugs Bunny.”
I have worked with the great Stan Freberg on practically all of his records and radio shows. A lot of people remember “St. George and the Dragonette” for example and, more recently, the “Best of Freberg,” album.
I’m practically a voice detached from a body, but I love my work—and its financial rewards. And another good angle is the fact that in the far distant future, I won't have to worry about my appearance—only my voice which, from all indications, is holding up well despite its constant use, professionally, that is.
I dare you to turn on your radio or TV set without hearing me.

These days, perhaps you can find her on TV constantly, but you can on video-sharing web sites with endless cartoons. Let’s end our June Foray Day post with a fan-made video of a few of June’s most famous animated roles.