My interview with June Foray occurred on an early June Saturday of 1996 at The Cartoon Company, a specialized shop selling animation cels, in Crown Center, Kansas City, Missouri. Then my notes were lost and the story never written…until now. Enjoy!

By Steve Crum

I never met “The Man of a Thousand Voices,” Mel Blanc, but I did meet “The Woman of a Thousand Voices.” It happened 27 years ago, around the first of June, 1996.

That was when Natasha Fatale was in Kansas City. So were Jokey Smurf,  Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Tweety Bird, and Granny (Tweety’s protector from Sylvester the Cat). And I have to mention one of my fav voices, that of the vicious “Talking Tina” in the classic Twilight Zone episode,”Living Doll.”

Hokey Smoke! They were June Foray!

I caught up with her as she was greeting fans at—appropriately—The Cartoon Company, a store specializing in sales of motion picture cartoon cels. In the creation of cartoons before digital art, cels were hand-drawn on clear celluloid sheets placed over painted backgrounds. These are better known as animation cels. Since 1990, studios have used digitalized images instead of cels.

As I walked into the shop, about a half dozen fans were waiting in line to meet the voice legend. At room center, Foray sat behind a table and atop a tall chair, which hid her diminutive 4’ 11” height. She did not look nearly as old as her 79 years, and her strong, trained voice was still vibrant.

“My voice is in my genes,” Foray explained, “and it has been that way since I was six years old.” So began my few minutes virtually alone with June Foray. (No one else was waiting to see her, so I had ample private time with her.)

“My untrained talent led to an extremely lucrative career in cartoon voices”—for Warner Brothers, Jay Ward, Walt Disney, Hanna-Barbera, and various other radio, TV and movie voice-overs and commercials. After hundreds of vocal appearances in cartoons, Foray began the 1960s with her efforts for the preservation and promotion of animation. During that period, she was awarded for her past work in films.

After two decades, her lobbying for the creation of an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature category finally paid off. This was a definite plus in her career.

On the flip side, she carries ill feelings about the trend of casting celebrity voices instead of professional voice actors in animated features. This is exemplified by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in the Toy Story movies. Not only do they get paid much more, but they receive screen credit big time.

“It usurps those who are trying to make a living solely as such,” Foray says. Yet she has been greatly unaffected by the trend, having had steady work from the beginning.

My introduction to that Foray voice came when she WAS given voice credit—but on radio during the summer of 1957. That is when she was part of the stock company of credited voice actors (along with Daws Butler, the voice of Huckleberry Hound) starring on the CBS radio comedy program, The Stan Freberg Show. She had already made a name with satirist Freberg on several best selling 45 rpm records during the early 1950s—St. George and the Dragonet, Sh-Boom, and Little Blue Riding Hood among them. She, Butler and Freberg had even performed St. George live on The Ed Sullivan Show. June Foray’s wonderful sense of humor was so apparent.

I am sure that most Freberg fans cite his 1961 Capitol LP, Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Vol.1, as his classic best recording. This monumental musical-comedy satire includes June Foray doing a variety of voices that cover the founding of our nation. Thirty-five years later, Vol. 2 was finally released…and Foray was again a prominent voice therein.

It had just been released when I spoke of it to her. She heartily roared when I brought it up.

“I was out driving and had not listened to it yet,” she says, “so I  put the CD in my player…and laughed. I laughed so hard I had to pull over and park the car to continue laughing.”

Warner Brothers animation legend Chuck Jones worked with Foray numerous times in some of the most hilarious cartoons ever created.

“June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc,” he said. “Mel Blanc was the male June Foray.”

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June Foray worked primarily in television productions throughout the rest of her life. She remains the oldest entertainer to receive an Emmy Award for her voice work in 2012’s The Garfield Show (as Mrs. Cauldron). She received a Governors Award Emmy the following year. She died at 99 on July 26, 2017.