Dog Bites Man the Terry Way

The drawing of a suburban man and his dog looks fairly ordinary in this scene from Lucky Dog, a 1956 Terrytoon directed by Connie Rasinski.



Wait! Did I say “Terrytoon”? You know that means some weird shapes will suddenly hit the screen.



As an added bonus, this cartoon features the Terry Splash™.

Corny Concerto Stretch In-Betweens

The fey Bugs Bunny twirls and zips from the scene in A Corny Concerto, Bob Clampett’s send-up of Disney’s Fantasia.



Cut to the shocked dog.



Bugs appears. The drawing is similar to a smear in Freleng’s A Hare Grows in Manhattan (1947).



The dog backs up. Multiple Bugs hands ties his tail to the tree.



The dog runs forward and springs back.



Bob McKimson is the credited animator on screen but Virgil Ross, Sid Sutherland and Rod Scribner should be here as well.

Gisele MacKenzie's Horse Play

There’s a down side to fame. Yes, you get lots of money and a comfortable life. But you can also attract leeches and kooks.

The 1950s were a more innocent time is the conclusion of many people who were never there. Perhaps it’s true in some ways. Today we hear about stalkers who are dangerous. Way-back-when, they were, well, just eccentric.

Here are some examples cited by one of Canada’s singing exports to the U.S.—Gisele MacKenzie. She had her biggest fame on the American side of the line in the ‘50s, appearing on stage with Jack Benny, smoothly singing on Your Hit Parade and even having her own network show. She also had to deal with obsessed men, as revealed in this story that appeared in newspapers of May 16, 1958. Unfortunately, the ending leaves readers hanging in mid-air.

Follows Gisele All Over.
By LEE BELSER.
International News Service.
HOLLYWOOD—Gisele MacKenzie, since her emergence as a national celebrity, has found a lot of wonderful people in the world but a lot of crackpots, too. "There was the time," she laughed, "that some guy followed me all over the country just so he could pop out from behind the potted palms and yell, 'boo, I'm here.'
"So he's here," she said, "so I didn't even know this guy!"
This amorous character became such a nuisance that the cops chased him out of Las Vegas during one of Gisele's engagements there. But that didn't stop him. When the singing star left for Canada, he hopped into his trusty auto—dressed in pink bermuda shorts yet—and chugged all the way to Winnipeg just to "surprise" her.
"He did too," she grinned, "and he surprised the cops too who chased him out of town again!"
Then there was the old farm hand, who, completely smitten by Gisele, wrote and told her he loved her and in fact had decided to marry her—all she had to do was set the date.
But then he heard her sing a sexy song and wrote furiously: "The deal is off. You are obviously a woman of the world and I don't think you'd made a good wife after all. However, I feel I owe you something, so I'm going to send you my horse!"
Gisele said he enclosed a picture of the animal a sway-backed, rawboned nag that had all the earmarks of having ploughed its last furrow.
"The horse never arrived," she added, "and you can imagine how sad I was."
One of the worst experiences that ever befell Gisele concerned a Wall Street tycoon who had delusions of marriage with the singer to the point where he wrote her passionate letters telling her it was all right for them to wed and that his wife had even agreed to a $300,000 settlement!
"I never met this guy either," she declared. "And after that, I didn't want to."
Romantically speaking, no more suitors need apply. Gisele is all sewed up—with her brand new husband, Bob Shuttleworth, who she says, won her in a raffle!

No doubt when Gisele faded from TV screens, the obsessive fans faded away, too. Gisele wasn’t bothered when others took over the spotlight. She had a family.

Here’s a Vancouver Sun “Where are they now”-type story about Gisele MacKenzie from the April 24, 1971 edition. Her brother Georges was living on the West Coast where he became an executive with the CBC French-language operations. We doubt he was ever stalked by fans but the darndest things happen in broadcasting.

Gisele: no postcard mother
By LES WEDMAN
"Go find out whatever happened to Gisele MacKenzie" is what the orders were for an interview at CBUT, where she was waiting out a pre-rehearsal period before doing two guest appearances with The Irish Rovers.
Well, the answer is that nothing has happened to Gisele MacKenzie that doesn't happen to people in show business.
After all, it's been 20 years since Gisele left Canada for New York and Hollywood and she isn't up here now to fill any Canadian content for the CBC, because she's been a U.S. citizen for the past decade.
She was married to her agent, Bob Shuttleworth, for seven years, and five years ago they divorced. She has two children, Mackenzie, who's 10, and Gigi, who's nine.
And because she decided not to be a "postcard mother," Gisele MacKenzie passed up big-time stardom, settling for good and steady work that kept her as close as possible to her Encino, Calif., home.

She's just finished starring in Mame and today, after a reunion with singing brother George LaFleche and his family, she flew south to put the final touches to her syndicated TV show, and to do more recordings, theatre, musical comedy, TV commercials. And movies. "I belong there," the tall, positive-thinking Miss MacKenzie declared between bites from a hamburger.
In came George LaFleche, who admitted he got his first singing job in Toronto because he was Gisele's brother. "And I was terrible," he exclaimed. He's still Gisele's brother, but it doesn't bother him anymore. He's proud of his sister.
Their close relationship goes all the way back to Winnipeg when Gisele took violin lessons and George played the cello. The difference was she enjoyed her music, overcame her laziness, and was forced to work hard.
She and George compared notes on dogs and children and he came off second best again, because Gisele, the actress, knew how to put over her harrowing experiences as a mother whose offspring refuse to practise piano.
"They knew how to play, especially Mac. But it got so that they were unlearning everything. I had to go out of the house because I couldn't stand to listen to them play.
"I got a brainwave. It was, I thought, like taking medals away from a soldier. I said, ‘I am going to deprive you of your piano lessons; I want you never to insult my piano again by putting your hands on it.’"
Then she ripped up reams of sheet music and that was that.
"I wasn't going to waste any more money. And it wasn't worth the aggravation," the singing star concluded.
"Did it work?" asked brother George.
"No. They practically cheered," replied mother Gisele.
Having described herself as a strict disciplinarian—and that includes dishing out corporal punishment—Miss MacKenzie said she's going to have to think up something new.
She used to say to them, Okay, no watching TV for a week.
That used to hurt. But not now. It's a relief not watching television for a week.
Just about then she cleared the dressing room to change, first going over some fresh repartee with brother George, because they discovered Channel 2's Irish Rovers' Show has been sold to the U.S. and nobody down there knows that Gisele MacKenzie and George LaFleche are related.
And that was the last seen of Gisele MacKenzie until May 10 and May 17, when her two guest shots will be aired.
By the way. You really want to know what's happened to Gisele MacKenzie? She sings better than she ever did.

Gisele died in 2003. She survived both the trappings and downsides of fame, even though she never did get a horse out of it.

Hey, Audience, Have Some Water

Tom and Jerry use a water-filled elephant to stop packs of angry, marauding lions at a circus at the end of Tight Rope Tricks (1933). Hmm. There are frames where the stream of water isn’t connected to the elephant’s trunk.



The Van Beuren story department wonders about the next gag. “I know!” says John Foster or someone else, “Let’s have Tom turn the water onto the theatre audience.” So Tom does.



Dissolve into the final scene. The lions drown (now there’s comedy!). Floating up from the sea of water (how much was in that elephant, anyway?) are Tom, Jerry, the female tight-rope walker (voiced by Margie Hines) and a happy elephant. Jerry dances on top of the elephant for no particular reason as the iris closes to end another Van Beuren cartoon.



George Rufle gets a “by” credit along with Foster, with musical accompaniment scored by Gene Rodemich.

What's 80, Doc?

There was a Bugs Bunny before July 27, 1940. Studio publicity materials refer to earlier rabbits that appeared in Warner Bros. cartoons as Bugs Bunny. Chuck Jones even made an Elmer Fudd vs grey rabbit (with no name on screen) cartoon earlier in the year called Elmer’s Candid Camera.

But once Tex Avery took the rabbit, had Bob Givens redesign him, got Mel Blanc to come up with a snazzier voice, avoided the unfunny self-mumbles and added strong comic routines, it was a whole new game. Warners quickly started referring to the Avery rabbit in the press as a brand-new character and demanded Leon Schlesinger’s staff to make more cartoons with the wise-ass, Givens-designed rabbit.

Here’s a great routine, one that Avery would never have tried after leaving Warners because his humour at MGM didn’t unfold slowly there; it was pretty much slam-bang/on-to-the-next-gag. The scene works because the audience wonders what it is the rabbit’s going to go. And Avery (with gagman Rich Hogan) built it brick by brick.

Elmer leaves bait for Bugs. (“Wabbits wuvv cawwots,” he reveals).



Cut to a close-up of the carrot and Bugs’ hand extending from the rabbit hole. The hand feels around, discovers the carrot, taps and strokes it with a finger. Now here’s a finger with personality!



Aha!



The hand grabs it. Zoom back down the hole.



Cut to Elmer racing to the hole and aiming his rifle. Cut again to the close-up. The hand feels around again, touched the gun, toings it with a finger to produce a gun-like metallic sound, retreats to the hole, then returns the mostly-eaten character to the ground, pats the gun barrel and the hand disappears.



That’s a good routine right there but Avery hasn’t finished milking it. After about a 24-frame pause, the hand emerges to reclaim its prize. Elmer lowers the gun as Carl Stalling plays a horn stab for emphasis. The hand taps a finger as if deciding what to do next. Then the fingers walk past the carrot to “While Strolling Through the Park One Day” before the hand suddenly backhands the vegetable and goes back into the hole.



Virgil Ross is credited with the animation in the short. Whether these scenes are his, or Bob McKimson’s, or someone else’s, I don’t know.

If you haven’t had enough of Bugs’ birthday, read what we posted for the wabbit’s 75th in this post.

Cigars and Ad-Libs

The way one writer put it, Jack Benny practically went in and winged his radio show.

Even at the start of his career, that was doubtful. Benny worked closely with all his writers, one of them relating in later years how they would spend time debating whether one word was funnier than another during story conferences at the Benny home (or, sometimes, in Palm Springs).

A writer for the Universal News Service profiled Benny and his show in her feature column of March 4, 1936 as part of a series on radio stars (she also profiled Burns and Allen). We transcribe it below. Universal, by the way, merged with Hearst’s International News Service the following year.

The script for the first appearance of Mary Livingstone on the show exists and it is hardly the ad-lib fest described below. Her debut was carefully integrated into the broadcast.

It appears newspapers used archived photos to accompany this article; I’ve found several different ones. The photos you see with this post are from other sources. You’ll note a cast photo. It is from later in 1936 when Phil Harris took over from Johnny Green at the start of the 1936-37 season. I’m using it because I like it and the one I found with Green is very fuzzy.

Nobody Cares If Jack Benny Doesn’t Rehearse—He's 'Tops'
Radio Comedian Prefers to 'Get in the Mood’
By Dorothy Roe.
NEW YORK, N. Y. (U.N.S.)—Jack Benny points his cigar severely at Mary Livingstone and demands: “Woman, don't you know we have to go on the air in 20 minutes?” Mary powders her nose, ruffles her script and trills: "Wouldn't it be funny if we didn't go on tonight?"
Jack replies severely: “Whaddaya mean funny?”
Rehearsal.
Mary widens her immense brown eyes and says innocently: “Well, I'll bet a lot of people would think we were funnier if we didn't say anything at all.” That is a sample of a Jack Benny rehearsal. Jack and Mary, who is his wife, always intend to rehearse. They go down to the NBC studios sometimes a whole hour and a half before their program goes on the air. But then Don Wilson, their cherubic announcer; Kenny Baker, their youthful tenor; Johnny Green, their orchestra leader; Harry Conn, their script writer, and the other members of the cast always have a lot of new gags and what with this and what with that, time marches on.
First Place.
But nobody seems to care whether Jack and Mary rehearse or not. The fact that the radio public has just voted them first place over all air programs for the second year in succession proves that.
And if the sounds of merriment that come through your radio of a Sunday evening make you think Jack and Mary and the boys and girls are having a good time earning their daily bread, you guessed right.
Radio's Number 1 comedian goes on the air with less preparation than probably any other artist of the air waves.
"In The Mood."
Benny, bland, carefree, chewing his eternal cigar, explains: “If we rehearse too much, the program would be wooden. You see, we gotta be in the mood.”
One reading of the script, with the entire cast, and one so-called "dress rehearsal" with the micro phone takes care of the preparation for the program, and that, it is explained, is done chiefly for timing.
Benny often changes his script after the program has started on the air, and Mary knows how to keep up with his ad libs.
Accident.
It was an accident, as a matter of fact, that launched Mary Livingstone on an air career along with her famous husband. One night the script ran short during a broadcast, and Jack had to improvise. He called to Mary, who was sitting with the audience, and started an argument over the mike! Mary kept saying in scared voice: “Hush, Jack, you're on the air. All those people will hear you.”
And the radio audience loved it. An avalanche of telegrams and mail proved that. So from then on Mary Livingstone was a part of the act.
Jack explains:
“Mary doesn't have to act. She just naturally has a deadpan voice. She not only is my best pal and severest critic, but my ideal deadpan straight man.”
From the Heart.
And that may be a new kind of romantic compliment, but it came from the heart.
While most radio script writers keep from two to six weeks ahead with their programs, the Benny gang never even thinks of what the Sunday night act is to be until along about Thursday.
Then Benny gets together with Conn, and the two map out the rough outlines of the script.
Nothing more is done about it until Saturday morning, when Benny reads through the script with his director and sponsors; that's to be sure the script is safe—that there is no danger of libel or censorship or any of the bogey men of radio.
“Skip It.”

The only real rehearsal takes place just before the program goes on the air and that is a performance which usually has even the studio page boys holding their sides. It goes something like this:
Jack: “Where are you reading? I'm on Page 9.”
Mary: “Well, I’m on Page 3. Skip it.”
During a broadcast Jack chews a cigar, makes faces at the audience, executes a few dance steps now and then, and hangs his head prettily during applause.
Broadcasts are held in one of the huge N.B.C. studios, before an audience of 1,500, admitted by cards from the sponsors or the broadcasting company.
Both Jack and Mary throw the pages of their script on the floor as the broadcast progresses, and if anybody reads the wrong lines, that's all right. It gives them a chance at ad lib, which they would rather do than eat.
Pinch Hitting.
Sometimes the announcer, roly poly Don Wilson, goes into such roars of laughter during a broadcast that he is unable to talk, whereupon Benny nobly pinch hits. All members of the company, including the orchestra leader and Jack's secretary, are pressed into service before the 30-minute period on the air is over. And they love it. So does the public.
Jack fell in love with Mary Livingstone one day in Los Angeles, when she called him a ham actor and hired six little boys to sit in the front row at his show and not laugh. They have an adopted baby, Joan Naomi, 21 months old.
Their closest friends are George Burns and Gracie Allen and their ambition is to get a million dollars so they won't have to be funny any more.

Regis Quits . . . But Not For Long

The man with the record for the most hours on American television once thought he wasn’t wanted on the air and walked off on camera.

Obviously, that didn’t last forever. In fact, Regis Philbin’s self-retirement as Joey Bishop’s announcer spanned only a few days until Bishop reminded him who his boss was—it was Joey Bishop. Joey told him he was coming back. He came back.

I suspect TV viewers today think of Regis as the indefatigable host of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? or shouting banter at Kathie Lee Gifford on a daytime show. Maybe even being a partner in some funny routines with David Letterman. However I am of such a vintage to remember his name from the days when ABC thought the dour Joey Bishop could somehow overtake Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin in the late-night sweepstakes. The overly-buoyant Regis was hand-picked to be the sidekick. After all, how could you forget a name like “Regis Philbin”?

The Bishop show debuted April 17, 1967. Critics weren’t kind to Regis. One exclaimed he didn’t seem to have anything to do. Another expressed her opinion that Regis was annoying even when he wasn’t on camera. Still others said there was no chemistry between Philbin and Bishop, whom they accused of verbally abusing his announcer (Bob Crane said he refused to go on the Bishop show because of it).

All this led up to Philbin quitting the show during a taping session, a moment satirised by the great show SCTV when announcer William B. Williams walked off The Sammy Maudlin Show because he was “bringing it down.” (William B. then failed at his own show. By contrast, Regis had failed at his own show before the walk-off, having replaced Steve Allen in a syndicated series for Westinghouse).

Here’s an unbylined story from United Press International, Friday, July 12, 1968, explaining what happened.

Philbin Quits Bishop Show, Shocks Fans
HOLLYWOOD (UPI) – Regis Philbin, his voice breaking, said "I'm leaving," and walked off the stage of the Joey Bishop show amid cries of "No, no," from the audience.
The soft-voiced announcer, sidekick and comedy foil for Bishop on his late night television show, announced Thursday night he was quitting in an emotional dialogue that displaced the usual repartee that opens the American Broadcasting Co. program.
Own Show Dropped
"He gave me a break when nobody else would," Philbin said, referring to the period after his own syndicated show was dropped by Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. because of poor ratings.

"It's one thing to lose your own show, but it's another to lose someone else's," Philbin said, his voice beginning to crack. "I'm leaving."
"Don't leave," Bishop appealed.
"I'm leaving," Philbin said.
"I'll call you tomorrow. I'm very upset," he walked to the wings at the rear of the stage, shaking hands with a cameraman on the way out.
In tonight's show, taped Thursday night, bandleader Johnny Mann replaced Philbin and Bishop introduces the commercials himself.
"State of Shock"
Philbin, 35, told a shocked Bishop, "I am tonight in a state of shock. Last night I found out that the network still thinks I am wrong for this show."
"Maybe we should discuss this after the show, Regis," said Bishop.
Philbin said he believed he was kept on the show this long only because Bishop was "protecting" him from network superiors who wanted him dropped.
He said he was unaware of the pressure until recently.
"When, for 15 months, they have been on his (Bishop's) back because of me, and me not knowing this . . . fifteen months nagging him about me and I don't even know it. That's incredible."
ABC issued the following statement:
"ABC is surprised at the action taken by Regis Philbin. We feel that his statements were unwarranted and have no basis in fact."
The spokesman quoted Bishop as saying: "Regis is a fine but sensitive young man everything is going to be fine."
A network source said Bishop originally picked Philbin for the show before it went on the air 15 months ago. Bishop likes him personally and hopes to resolve the matter.
Someone apparently made Philbin feel he was not an asset to the show, the source said, and that the program might have been more successful securing sponsors and spot commercials without him.
"This," the source said, "is idiotic because many people felt Philbin has been a definite asset to the show because, while Bishop is considered by many people to be very eastern and very show business, Philbin is the perfect balance as a mid-western type, ordinary, down-to-earth guy people can identify with and the Bishop show is strong in the grassroots areas."

I like how the source describes the Bronx-born Philbin as “a mid-western type.”

Within four days, Regis calmed down and newspapers reported he was returning to the Bishop fold.

The Chicago Tribune News Service published this interview the following month.

Regis Philbin, Joey, Tell the Inside on the Hubub
BY NORMA LEE BROWNING
REGIS PHILBIN, television's latest dramatic drop-out, has a new respect for TV viewers.
"I am very impressed that so many people would take the time to write a letter or send a telegram," said Philbin, who is digging his way out of an avalanche in the wake of his walk-out from ABC-TV's The Joey Bishop Show.
Philbin, 35-year-old choir-boyish sidekick, foil, and walking partner of Pal Joey, was persuaded by Bishop to rejoin the show after an unprecedented protest from television audiences.
ABC-TV's Hollywood headquarters was bombarded with more than 300 telegrams in the first 24 hours after the walk-out. Network telephone switchboards were jammed on both east and west coasts. Letters are still pouring in.
A spokesman said, "We're inundated with tons of mail from North Dakota, "West Virginia, everywhere . . ."
Philbin interrupted to ask, "Is there an Ames, Iowa? I got the most lucid letter from a lady in Ames. She should be a TV critic. It's going to take months just to read all the letters.
"I wish I could thank everyone personally. Their letters show that we have a certain rapport with our audience because we're an ad lib show. People know it's for real, no script. Then, when something happens, they care enough to sit down and write you a letter. It's better than all the ratings ..." What is the real reason Philbin walked off the show?
The reason given to Bishop and a stunned studio audience on the night of the walk-off was that Philbin believed network officials wanted him dropped from the program (the network later denied this).
"It was no overnight decision," he told me in an exclusive interview. "Everyone knows the show got off to a rocky start, and I kept hearing that it was my fault, the opening wasn't right. I knew how much the show meant to Joey and I offered to get off. He said, 'As long as I'm on, you're on'. So I stayed. But every once in a while, I would hear the same thing—the opening wasn't right. And last Tuesday I heard it again. And after 15 months of batting my brains out, it really got to me.

"I was discouraged, and I told Joey that night I didn't want to do the show. He said, 'You've got to go on'. So I did."
Why did he then decide to do his walk-off in front of the studio audience, as well as millions of TV viewers?
"I didn't want to leave Joey with the burden of explaining my actions. I decided to explain them myself."
He walked off the stage, into his dressing room, removed his make-up and then went for a cup of coffee at a restaurant near Hollywood and Vine streets. An elderly couple came in and recognized him. They had followed him even from his pre-Joey Bishop days in San Diego TV. "I'm so happy you've found steady work," they said. They wouldn't see his taped show with the walk-off until the following night.
"Joey went out on a limb for me, gave me a break, and stuck by me," said Philbin. "I feel a great sense of loyalty to him and I would never leave him for my own gain. But I felt that I was putting him in a position of compromise, of having to defend me."
Why did he go back on the show?
"Joey reminded me that I am under contract to him, not the network. He also asked, 'Who are you hurting if you don't come back? Me. This is what I want'. He said I was too thin-skinned and shouldn't pay any attention to some fifth or sixth vice president who didn't know what he was talking about."
Bishop says Philbin is too "sensitive". 'It's tough to please everyone' He doesn't exactly fit the Hollywood mold. He's a graduate of Notre Dame, where he majored in sociology. After college he served a hitch in the navy in the Pacific, and later broke into television from the ground up as a page boy at NBC in New York.
"The Joey Bishop show had only 44 station outlets assured at its inception, but began with 119, now has 155 outlets. It's [sic] ratings have sometimes surpassed Johnny Carson's in some area[s].
The show is owned by Joey Bishop, not the network. The comedian's comment: "We've proved the show is a success. All this network nitpicking always comes from some guy who has been given a title and has nothing else to do."

Ironically, Bishop walked off his own show at the end of November 1969 and left behind on stage to pick up the pieces was Regis Philbin. When it was bounced off the air a month later, Rege picked up the pieces again and carried on with his career. He had a pretty good one, too.

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.

Today's Animation Question

How does Casper hear when he has no ears?