November 2, 2022 • 40 mins
It's hard to imagine childhood without the classic cartoon characters June Foray gave voice to: Little Cindy Lou Who from The Grinch, Granny from the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, Rocky the Flying Squirrel, Natasha Fatale, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi's villainous cobra. June Foray even provided the voice of the Chatty Cathy doll. Mo talks with Nancy Cartwright (Bart Simpson) and Bob Bergen (Porky Pig) about the woman they call 'the Meryl Streep of voice actors.'
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
No Battle of Goan and Lexington April nineteen, seventeen seventy
five Declaration of Independence six. I learned to read when
I was six, so I must have known the name
Mel Blank before I turned seven. Looks like the genius
(00:23):
is trying to show me his name was at the
start of so many of the cartoons I watched after school.
Blank was the voice, most famously of Bugs Bunny, but
he was also the voice of Daffy Duck Your co
and Sylvester the Cat Rocket, both characters I could relate
(00:44):
to because they also had trouble with says suffering sucotash Nope,
I still can't say it and not sound like a cat.
But that's not even close to the whole list. On
the flint Stones, Mel Blank was both Fred neighbor Barney
Come On Fred, and Fred's pet Dino. Fast forward a
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few thousand years and he was George Jetson's hot tempered
boss Cosmos Space Lee, What are You Toy? He was
the original to Can Sam in commercials for fruit Loops Cereal,
I wasn't allowed to eat and he poured on the
sugar as peppy lapew You are Pino, I am you
(01:34):
a Blank. There's a good reason why mel Blanc was
known as the Man of a thousand voices. I mean
there wasn't a voice he didn't do right, Oh, hockey smoke.
I wouldn't agree with that. I stand corrected, bullwinkled J
Moose's best friend Rocket J Squirrel, I'm here. He wasn't
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voiced by Blank, Rocky's pot Sylvanian nemesis Natasha Fatale Dylink,
I am here. Mel Blank didn't play her either. Blank
didn't make the Grinch's heart grow three sizes as Cindy
Luhu Candy car Why why are you taking our Christmas tree?
Or keep Sylvester from snacking on Tweetie as Granny. If
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there's one little said, just one little feather hand of
this bird, I'm going to sell you to the violin
string actory. Those are just a few of the characters
voiced by a four ft eleven dynamo named June Fay.
Why should we know the name June Fay. June Foray
was the go to female voice artist Daddy Candy Daddy
(02:43):
Caddy An. She was the voice of Chatty Cathy, the
doll iconic doll. Oh my gosh, that my sister Mary
Beth had really yeah, this was in the sixties, and
how did you Chatty Cathy work? By the way, did
you pull a train string? And then she would say,
good play, how how do you change my Later on
The Twilight Zone, June showed off her dramatic chops, playing
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a sinister, murderous version of Chatty Cathy, Nickie Tina Can
I'm beginning to hate you. Sometimes, June worked blue literally
as the petite prankster Joki on The Smurfs were I'll
throw in one. You may not even know because she
was uncredited. She was the voice of Little Ricky's dog
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barking and I Love Lucy? Are you serious? Don't you
know what time it is? Among her many fans, legendary
animator Chuck Jones. While many called June the female Mele Blank,
Jones like to say that mel Blank was the male
June Farrey. Why would you know June farre because she's
(03:51):
part of your childhood. But even though most of us
grew up with her characters, June Farrey isn't widely known today.
It turns out there's a bit of a story behind
those Looney Tunes credits from CBS Sunday Morning and I
heart I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries, this moment June Fay,
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July two thousand seventeen, The Woman of a thousand voices.
You know, eat my shorts as a little rude and
I threw it out as just an ad lib, eat
my shorts And next thing, yes, it's on all these
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T shirts and it became a catchphrase. You probably wouldn't
recognize Nancy Cartwright if you passed her on the street.
That's because Nancy isn't a famous face. She's a famous voice. Actually,
like June far Ay, she's a lot of famous voices.
For the past three decades, Nancy has played several young
(05:05):
boys on The Simpsons, including Ralph Wigham Nelson Months and
of course don't have a cow man Bart Simpson and
I'm like this perennial ten year old boy, which is
so awesome and best job for me because it's kind
of what I wanted to do, just like me. Nancy
watched a lot of TV growing up, The Jetson's and
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the flint Stones, and then in the seventies it was
Mary Tyler Moore. It was nothing was better. Yeah, I
was inspired by Ruth Buzzy on laughing. You know, I'm
saving it until after I'm married. On next Saturday Night,
each Other comes another one of those under the radar
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famous people, Bob Bergen, b E. R G. And I
am an actor and a pig, porky pig to be specific,
but that pretty impressive. Look. We have to do the
same amount of work times ten that an on camera
actor does, because it's just with the voice. It's true.
(06:08):
Voice acting doesn't get the credit it deserves. A lot
of cartoon characters aren't even human, but somehow voice actors
are able to make them seem well like people. My
friend Rucy Taylor was Huey, Dewey and Louis for Disney
for years. Rats that was still going the stairs. CA's okay,
that's way I'm quicker at anyway. She used to perform
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it like this and people can't see what I'm doing.
But I'm sort of like doing Mr spox vulcan thing
with my fingers. Uh. And I said her, why are
you doing the ducks like this? She goes webbed feet.
I said, those aren't feats. She goes, they are when
I'm performing. You know, it's whatever works for you. A
lot of it is in my face. Bart is Bart's
pretty open. I don't think I change with him, but
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like Nelson months, I look at my lips like every
kind of like talking out of the side of my mouth,
you know. And when did I do rap for my eyebrows?
Go really really hi? Hi mom? And to be clear,
we're not editing this. She just did that back to
back to back. Nancy's and Bob's voices make me laugh,
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but I wanted to talk to them about a voice
that originally terrified me. In the Looney Tunes episode Broomstick Bunny,
Witch Hazel is a green faced tag with a single
snaggle tooth. Her hair is a mess. She's a witch.
But it wasn't so much what she looked like that
scared me, but how she sounded. That cackle way too
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close to Margaret Hamilton's in The Wizard of Oz. You
know her laugh for Witch Hazel. It's so quintessential, right,
which it's funny, it's also terrifying when it was little. Yes,
I loved her. I loved almost as menacing as Witch
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Hazel's cackle was the song she sang while she was
preparing her witches brewn a spider some glue. That devilish
ditty ran in a loop through my head as a child.
Freak you out. It freaked me out, and I had
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for years running through my mind a cup of tea spider,
some glue. Yeah. In the cartoon, Witch Hazel gloats about
being the ugliest witch of all until Bugs Bunny shows up.
This trick of treating is a pretty nice rackon dressed
as an even uglier witch. I don't remember seeing her
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rigetti of the union meetings, and it's such a witty cartoon.
It's hysterical. I'd forgotten that she feels so threatened cause
she's no longer going to be the ugliest witch. That's
I wore new dearie. I'm going to worm all of
your ugly secrets out of you. Gear me now, Coan
does your hair, which Hazel ends up chasing Bugs around
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with a butcher knife that shop enough to split a hair.
In the end, of course, Bugs outwit switch Hazel. He
gets her to drink a potion that makes her pretty,
and the pretty woman she turns into at the end
of that short was modeled after the woman voicing her
June for Ay. What was she like physically? Uh? Like
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four ft nothing really, yeah, a tiny little thing like
a gymnast guy. Yeah, eight, like you wouldn't believe, and
never gained weight. And she's like this turbo charged, a
little spark plug in a tiny little body. Indeed, June
Foray had stamina. She lived until almost one hundred and
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worked nearly to the end. Her story. He began in Springfield, Massachusetts,
where she was born in nineteen seventeen. Not long after
June learned to talk. She was imitating animals, barking at
neighborhood dogs, and doing the impressions for her mother's Bridge
club of the theater actors who came through town. But
June's mother wanted her to be a dancer, so we
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enrolled her in tap classes until about with pneumonia and
did June's dancing career before it ever began. So it
was on to piano lessons, but June hated the piano.
Lucky for her, one day, when she was playing baseball,
she was hit by a pitch hey right on her finger.
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I was fortunate enough to break my finger playing baseball
with my brother, so I didn't play piano anymore. That's
June for Ay in the year two thousand talking about
the pitch she called a gift from heaven. So I said,
whether I really wanted to be in actress? And so
she and dad got the best drama teaches that there were.
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By the time she was fifteen, June was performing in
dramas on local radio station w b z A, where
she developed the granny voice she'd used throughout her career.
Around this time, June's father lost his autoparts business, so
the family moved across the country to Los Angeles. That
was just fine. By June, she'd already written herself a
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character called Lady Make Believe, a go get her. Even
back then, June called every radio station in town until
one of them agreed to put Lady Make Believe on
the air. Here's the story about the Happa Doodle. This
is from a recording June made decades later. Our little
Happa Doodle, when you first looked at him, looked just
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like a pixie. He had a tiny face that's showed
with merriment. I wrote them with a voice in mind,
and they were gentle stories. There was no violence in
any of them. Fast forward to World War Two, and June,
by now a young woman, was writing and performing on
radio dramas, boosting the morale of an anxious public. Better hurry,
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here you are here. She is playing a nurse in
episode of the Cavalcade of America. Yes, already, here's your
alcohol scrubbing. Thanks. June's radio career would end up lasting
well into the fifties. In one of my favorite bits
she ever did, she played a sort of robot interplanetary
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beauty queen on the Stan Freeburg Show. Some dope that
turly an tennis at the girl got cube suction cups.
I got shapely wheels. Yeah, they're they're pretty shapely at that.
I see you I in them. One radio show turned
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out to be especially important to June. On Smiling Ed's
bus dr Brown Gang, she met a writer director named
Hobart Donovan. Several years later, they married and stayed married
until his death in nineteen seventy six, It's time for
My Favorite Husband, starring Lucille Ball. Hello everybody now one
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big radio stars were making the transition into the brand
new medium of TV. Lucille Balls hit radio show My
favorite Husband. Now hurry and get me out of this
type thing. I feel like a ten inch weenie in
a five inch roll. Led to TV's I Love Lucy
that very same year I Want a Divorce. Dady White's
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radio appearances on shows like Family Theater, I Make the
Salad Mrs McGee led to a legendary and legendarily long
television career that included hosting Saturday Night Live in two
thousand and ten. Many of you know that I'm I'm
dy eight and a half years old. Well, it's going
to be here for no reason. June occasionally went on camera.
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Here she is playing a housewife opposite Johnny Carson on
The Johnny Carson Show in I'm going to be very
firm about this matter of an allowance. Well, I'm telling
you're right now, you're not going to get one. But
acting on TV didn't make use of June's real talent.
Off camera and on Mike, she could become anyone. And
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with the Golden Age of animation in full swing, June
Farrey was about to find her voice, come on and
join us. We mentioned earlier how as a kid, June
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Farrey was doing voices for anyone who would listen. Well,
Nancy Cartwright and Bob Bergen, Ak Bart Simpson and Porky
Pig started early two for them. The classroom was the
preferred venue. There was one teacher that I kind of
drove crazy because I would do I would do this thing, listeners,
I'm I'm I'm plunking my cheek right now, I can
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do it under my chin and doing that, and he
he would walk in the room and it would kind
of drive him nuts. Mr Dwarkin, wherever you are, sir um,
it would kind of and and he never did find
out that that was me. Or if I wanted to
get a drink of water, I would pretend like I
add the hiccups. And the trick to hiccups is you
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don't go You don't make it so obvious you just
as you're talking, you just sort of pull back. I
would answer questions in school like either the teacher or
porky pig. When I when I was a kid and
I got sent to the principal's office and the principal
would say, okay, which teacher, I'd say, Mr Snyder, do him?
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And if I did him, well, I got to go
back to class. If I did allow the impression, I
got detention. How serendipitous was that that you had a
principal who was incentivizing you to get even better the voices.
There you go. And I had also encouraged me not
to do as well in school because I was like, oh,
this is working for me. Did you dream of being
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porky peg even though there already was a porky bag
since I was five? That was my goal in life,
That's all. Folks don't believe him. This is Bob practicing
porky at home as a teenager. Gush. I don't know
why I have to learn the older I plug leadens anyhow.
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Some kids want to be a baseball player, some kids
want to be an astronaut, and they alternate back and
forth whether it's Monday or Friday. This is what I
wanted in life. The porky Bob grew up with was
voiced by mel Blank, didn't they say it will be
would be a wonderful lester camping way out here in
the middle of nowhere, who had been doing the pig's
voice for almost forty years, since seven, not long after
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the start of what's known as the Golden Age of animation.
That era began with the introduction of cartoons with the
sound Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse spoke his first words in
ninety nine Meanwhile, Warner Brothers debuted Porky Pig, Jaffy Duck,
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Elmer Fudd, and of course Bugs Bunny, of cause you
know this means war By the latter half of the century,
production studios like Hannah Barbara created characters specifically for TV,
the flint Stones, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, and a personal favorite,
snaggle Puss. The kid has class recognizes Tell him now.
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June Farrey got into animation through a sort of side door.
In the late nineteen forties, she went under contract with
Capitol Records doing a range of voice of her work
for kids and grown ups. Here she is once again
with satirist Stan Freeburg, doing a parody of the police
drama Dragnet. Ma'am, but I talked to me just a minute, ma'am.
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What about not much? Man, Just want to ask you
a few questions. What's your name? Blue Riding Hood? Where
you going to Graham House? What you got in the basket?
What are you trying to take up in the basket? Here?
Soon enough, Disney, which pioneered feature length animation, came calling
with a part in nineteen fifties Cinderella. Now. Cinderella is
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nominally about Cinderella, but a lot of the movie focuses
on a devious cat named Lucifer, which was voiced by
June Farrey. He was a mean old thing. He didn't
have any dialogue. But I was working for Disney. Cinderella
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was a big hit, and just a few years later,
June was summoned by that other big player in town.
My agent had called me and said, would you work
for Chuck Jones at Warner Brothers? And I said, well,
I'd love to work at Warner Brothers. But who is
Chuck Jones? As June would discover, Chuck Jones was a genius.
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Time Magazine once wrote that he made movie goers laugh
as often and as well as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.
He directed over two hundred fifty shorts for the studio,
including one of the greatest cartoons of all time, What's
Opera Doc The Webbit Killed the Webit, Killed the Webit
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Killed the Webbit. Under his direction, characters may have moved
in exact dreated ways and had extreme facial expressions just
to picture any of them getting hit with a frying pan.
But like any good comedy, these characters tapped into the
audience is very real wants and meads and anxieties. Here's
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Chuck Jones in comedy is concerned with small things. That
sort of thing that I am familiar with and you
were familiar with. That is how to get something to eat,
how to get someplace to sleep here, how to uh,
how to get your girl, how to get the boy.
All these things are very important. In June drove her
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Cadillac over to the Warner Brothers studios to meet him,
and this gorgeous hunk of men shook hands with me
and he said, I'm Chuck. Well, it was just astounding
that this effervescent, wonderful human being had wanted me to
work for him. Their meeting kicked off a long term collaboration.
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June loved working with Chuck Jones. She performed in about
forty of his shorts at Warner Brothers. He would give
her just enough direction and she would deliver the characters
he was after, including Granny and Witch Hazel. Later, after
he left Warner Brothers, Jones continued to hire her for
projects like Tom and Jerry and How the Grinch Stole
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Christmas and Ricky Ticky Tavi, about a mongoose protecting a
family of humans. Here's June as the villainous Cobra nagaina.
If you move, I strike, and if you do not move,
I strike, O fleeh Plea. Toward the end of his life,
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Jones fought for June to get a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame. She said, he told her, mel
Blank has a star, You're gonna get one if I
have anything to say about it. And in the year
two thousand, June, for a finally got one. By this
point you might be wondering, with all the characters June voiced,
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why didn't I know her name? Well, one reason is
that voice actors didn't and still don't, get much recognition.
The animators, the directors, the writers, everybody got credit, but
the actors didn't. I guess we weren't that important, except
we were. But there is one actor who did become
famous for his voice work in the forties, fifties, and sixties,
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Mel Blank. If you read the credits to Warner Brothers
cartoons from this goldenest part of the Golden Age, he's
almost always the only voice actor listed them. Bob Bergen
explains Mel Blank had asked for a raise. I think
in the forties and the studio said, no, we're not
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going to give you a raise. Instead, the studio gave
Mel blank soul screen credit. No matter how many other
actors were in a cartoon, only his name appeared on screen.
June's name nowhere to be seen. What a way to
run a railroad. I asked her what I did that
bother you? And she said it bothered everybody. Her ego
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I think was bruised. It wasn't the only disappointment June
faced in the late nineteen fifties. June played Betty Rubble
in a pilot for Hannah Barbera called The Flagstones Wilma,
When are We Going shown? But by the time The
flint Stones went into production, Joe Barbara had replaced June
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with b Benadarrett Finney. We've got our very old baby,
June said, missing out on that show broke her heart.
That much was clear. A few months later, Joe called
my agent said, we feel very bad about June. We'd
like to hire it for something out And I said,
you tell him to take a long walk off a
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short pier. And I didn't work for Bill and Joe
for a long time. But June, Foray was about to
start a whole new chapter thanks to a maverick in
the animation world named Jay Ward. Jay Ward had not
planned on a career in animation. After graduating from Harvard
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Business School, he opened a real estate office, but on
day one, a runaway lumber truck crashed into his office,
apparently while Ward had been reciting a poem to his
mailman and pinned Ward against a wall. While recovering from
his injuries, he decided he wanted to work in cartoons.
His show Crusader Rabbit, which debuted in ninety, was the
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first animated series produced for television. Down in Texas, they're
still talking about the little rabbit that had come down
from the United States to wipe out the warld state
of Texas. Obviously, the rabbit must have been Crusader Rabbit
or grew else would have thought of such a wonderful idea.
The drawings and movements may have been simpler and cheaper
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than the Warner Brothers artwork, but the humor was edgier,
more off kilter. June hadn't heard of Crusader Rabbit or
Jay Ward when he came calling in the late fifties,
but he was a fan and he had an idea
for a show that would help define both their careers.
So June tells me that she gets a call from
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Jay Ward to meet her for lunch. So I thought,
oh boy, that's an you know, free lunch. And I
met this jocular man with a walrus mustache and he
orders martiniz and June although she could hold her own,
and she said, oh, Jay, I can't. I can't drink
at lunch, and he goes, oh, come on, you'll love this.
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We started to talk and he gave me an idea
of a most in the Squirrel, which seemed a little odd,
but after the second Martini, I thought it was one
hell of an idea. Here's Bob's impression of June calling
her agent after that lunch from Member. She was four
ft eleven and had had two Martini's dies. June, I
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love this show. It's about a talking moose and a
flag squirrel and it's a complete that tire of the
Cold War, and they want me to play. No, I'm
not that drunk. It's true. This is this show. The
show was Rocky and his Friends. You might know it
as Rocky and Bullwinkle, with June Foray as Rocky Rocket.
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Jay Squirrel was his full name. June also voiced the
pots Albanian spy named Natasha Fatal. It managed to be
both smart and supremely silly from start to finish. I'm
not sure if more puns have ever been packed into
a half hour. But as You went to College, ten state,
no state pen. It was a great show. It was
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a genius, genius show. The series made good use of
June's acting range. They were segments like Dudley Dowright, which
sent up old fashioned melodramas think Damsel in Distress tied
to railroad tracks, and fractured fairy Tales, which put fresh
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spins on classic stories. Just then a remarkable thing happened.
Sleeping Beauty's eyes opened and she sat up. Don't worry, kids,
I wasn't really asleep. Then, Why the big year at
I just wanted to see if I could make it
in show beers. But the stars were Bullwinkle, the moose,
voiced by Bill Scott and June's Rocky Harry Bullwinkles. The
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show's about the start. The show premiered in nine and
maybe people may not know this. It aired in prime
time since it was aimed at adults. Steven Spielberg still
remembers watching his parents watch it, As he told The
New York Times, it was the first time that I
can recall my parents watching a cartoon show over my
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shoulder and laughing in places I couldn't comprehend. Oh, Minkle,
this is terrible. What kind of game can you play
with girls? Oh? It is really easy. Children should, isn't it.
Rocky and Bullwinkle ran for five years until nineteen sixty four,
living on long afterward in syndication where I discovered it.
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It's satire, influencing generations of show creators. We offended nations, countries, politicians,
school teachers, whether people, no matter what. And unlike her
early work with Warner Brothers, June Farrey's name appears in
the credits bequit Me, Booby, and your name will be
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in lights. By the nineteen eighties, June Farrey was kind
of a living legend. And I want companionship. I need
to be served if they want to get stuck, I'm
not that kind of Here she is returning to radio
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on The Howard Stern Show, reprising the role of Rocky
with Howard as Bullwinkle. In an even more adult version
of the original show. What could I go, Bruik, I've
got a Woody that won't quit. Hey, I told you
she worked Blue sometimes. Now, when another Landmark animated series
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was just getting off the ground in the late eighties, naturally,
June made an appearance those Simpsons, which a bunch of savages,
especially the Big Eight Father. June was on The Simpsons one.
She was that's Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson. Again.
They brought her in because she's June for Ray and
to have her come in and say, you know, the
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baby bunky bumper babysitting servies Rocky and Bart. It turns
out share something very special Rocky Squirrel in Bartholomy, Jay's Simpson.
That j in there is for j Ward. Did you
know that? I did not know that. So the genealogy
these two great characters are linked. June was revered throughout
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the animation world. One reason was her talent. June was
simply a master of her craft. I'm trying to think
of her equivalent on camera. June was the who of
voice acting. You know what this is. It's a big hoo,
but I'm gonna say Meryl Streep, oh oh gosh, was
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the Meryl Streep of voice actors, and she was a
genius comedic actress. You know, there's there's certain things you
can't learn no matter who you study. With pitch and timing,
you're born with that. How animated physically was she while
she was doing her voice work, very um and and
as we said earlier, I use a lot of facial expressions,
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so watching her do Rocky, I can't do Rocky, but
she would do this with her lips because it added
youth to the character Hoky Smoke. But we go, I
can't do the falsetto, but she would do that with
that character Hoky Smoke. Look there and what we're talking
Tina's She had a little smile on her face, which
was kind of sinister because the k that the doll
kills you super spooky twilight killing people who not really
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but I could hurt you, you know. I remember when
we worked on I think it was Space Jam and
watching her do Which Hazel and Granny for that she
was standing as her arms were flailing all over the
place when she was doing Which Hazel double double toil
and trouble, fire burn and cald and bubble. Not bad.
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So yeah, she totally physically took on every character. To
hear Bob Bergan tell it, she was also just a
pretty swell person. When is the first time that you
work with her? My very first job doing Leoney Tuns, Yeah,
it was. It was a cartoon called Tiny Toon Adventures,
and I was doing Porky and Tweetie and terrified, you know, um.
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And it was at a studio where they had these
partition walls between the actors to block the sound, and
June was right next to me, and I remember her
grabbing my hand and holding my hand as we walked
into the studio and she's doing Granny and I'm doing
Tweetie and you never you know those feelings when he's like,
I think someone's watching me. And I just felt someone
watching me from above. And I looked up and June
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was standing. She was tiny, She was standing on a
chair looking below, and she said, oh, Bob, I swear
it was Mel, which, by the way, it didn't sound
a thing like Mel. But that was her way of
just making me feel at home. Nancy Cartwright met June
even later, but she had long felt a kinship. We
had a few things in common. Height is one thing
that we had in common. They were also two women
(32:57):
who famously voiced boy characters. Producers realized that, you know,
you can't hire a real ten year old kid to
do a ten year old voice. His pipes are going
to be changing, and he's going to go through adolescence.
And how many parts would we have now if they
really would have stuck to that just as not economical
at all. Nancy also gives June a lot of credit
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for fighting for animation to be treated as an art form.
June led the way to establish the Annie Award so
that voice over actors could get acknowledged because at that
time we weren't being acknowledged with the with an Emmy,
which was wow, that's kind of not okay. And June
was a leader and pushing the Motion Picture Academy to
(33:39):
award an OSCAR for feature length animated movies, which they
finally did in two thousand two. I'd like to think
that Lucifer the Cat, the character she played in Cinderella
half a century before, was looking up that night. But
just as animation was being taken more serious a sleep
(34:00):
in the United States, the opportunities for voice actors began changing.
It's no secret for a while now. The big roles,
the kind that used to be played by voice actors
like June, have been scooped up by actors with familiar faces.
What we will never be those of us who aren't
well known is uh buzz light Year. We won't be
(34:23):
Woody in toy story, but we might be a green
army man. We're called utility players because when you see
in the end of a feature movie I animated feature
additional voices, that's us. This was a change that dismayed June.
She hated it. She did not understand why are they
going to people whose faces are known for a part
(34:44):
that's recorded. But even June's like, even if they're good,
there are people like you and me who can do this,
and why are they going to celebrities. It doesn't make sense.
That really bothered her a lot, But even as the
the street changed around her, it's veneration for June continued
into her nineties. So at the end of her life,
(35:07):
there was a Rocky and bullwinkled Geico commercial and from
what I understand, they brought June in to record it,
and they knew that she was up there in age
just to see what happens, and she didn't have the energy.
She didn't have she was just frail, so they hired
another actress to do it. The other actress's voice ended
(35:31):
up in the ad. Come and I remember that the
commercial was airing, and she called me. She goes. I
don't know what they were complaining about. I sound great.
I know very well the actress who did it. I
won't mention names, but they swore her to keep your
mouth shut out of respect for June, out of compassion.
The industry respected and loved her enough to let her
(35:53):
think it was her which and they paid her. I
don't think it was a stretch to say to the
ad agency, please pay the queen of this industry. I
love everything I do, with all of the parts that
I do, because there's a little bit of me and
all of them. So many of us really did grow
(36:14):
up with June's voices, learning to be irreverent from Rocky
and Bowlwinkle at Christmas time, listening to her pure innocence
as Cindy lu Whu, or like me, being freaked out
by her witch Hazel. Come on, it can't just be me.
But there's this one detail. Bob Bergin told me about
June something I hadn't heard before that I find so
(36:36):
telling about the care and love that she put into
what she did, and it has nothing to do with
her voice. She always dressed to the nines recording cartoons
to show up for work. Yeah, like she was going
over the evening and I would ask her why, and
(36:56):
she said, because I respect what I do and I
want to make a good impression. I'm going to work.
I always. I always used to think she had something
to do after, but no, it was for the job.
She had that much respect for what she was doing.
I remember one time we did have a conversation she
got a little deeper. She said, you know, I think
it comes from my radio days, where we have a
(37:17):
live audience and everybody in the audience is wearing you know,
coat and tie and hats and gloves. The actors did too,
So she just carried that over even though there was
no audience there. She dressed the part. She wasn't wearing
pajama pants just because she wouldn't be seen listen. If
she were still with us, I would say to her,
so in your home studio with COVID, what are you wearing?
(37:38):
Knowing Jewish you'd have the ear rings and the makeup
of all the characters you've played. If one were to
deliver a tribute to June for a which would it be? Alive?
My little, my little edged you're a magnificently, your magnificent,
You're wonderful, the you're wonderful. They it will be all.
(38:00):
I wish there was lets more. And that's all, folks. Well,
it looks as if for a time it's just a
bone run out. You've got the credits, Paul Winkle. I
(38:21):
certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask you
to please rate and review the podcast. You can also
follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow
me on Twitter at Morocco. Listen to Mobituaries on Amazon
Music or wherever you get your podcasts, and check out
Mobituaries Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best
(38:44):
selling book, now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes
plenty of stories not in the podcast. This episode of
Mobituaries was produced by Jake Harper and Aaron Shrank. Our
team of producers also includes Wilco, Martin Is Caccero, and
me Morocca. Editing was by Moral Walls, engineering by Sam Bear,
(39:07):
and fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is
Neon Homme Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our
theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from
Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie Basil and everyone
at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Roger Rains, Megan Marcus,
(39:29):
and Alberto Robina. Mobituary Senior producer is the Indomitable Aaron Shrank.
Executive producers include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is
created by Yours Truly and as always on dying gratitude
to Rand Morrison and John Carp for helping breathe life
into Mobituaries
No Battle of Goan and Lexington April nineteen, seventeen seventy
five Declaration of Independence six. I learned to read when
I was six, so I must have known the name
Mel Blank before I turned seven. Looks like the genius
(00:23):
is trying to show me his name was at the
start of so many of the cartoons I watched after school.
Blank was the voice, most famously of Bugs Bunny, but
he was also the voice of Daffy Duck Your co
and Sylvester the Cat Rocket, both characters I could relate
(00:44):
to because they also had trouble with says suffering sucotash Nope,
I still can't say it and not sound like a cat.
But that's not even close to the whole list. On
the flint Stones, Mel Blank was both Fred neighbor Barney
Come On Fred, and Fred's pet Dino. Fast forward a
(01:12):
few thousand years and he was George Jetson's hot tempered
boss Cosmos Space Lee, What are You Toy? He was
the original to Can Sam in commercials for fruit Loops Cereal,
I wasn't allowed to eat and he poured on the
sugar as peppy lapew You are Pino, I am you
(01:34):
a Blank. There's a good reason why mel Blanc was
known as the Man of a thousand voices. I mean
there wasn't a voice he didn't do right, Oh, hockey smoke.
I wouldn't agree with that. I stand corrected, bullwinkled J
Moose's best friend Rocket J Squirrel, I'm here. He wasn't
(01:55):
voiced by Blank, Rocky's pot Sylvanian nemesis Natasha Fatale Dylink,
I am here. Mel Blank didn't play her either. Blank
didn't make the Grinch's heart grow three sizes as Cindy
Luhu Candy car Why why are you taking our Christmas tree?
Or keep Sylvester from snacking on Tweetie as Granny. If
(02:18):
there's one little said, just one little feather hand of
this bird, I'm going to sell you to the violin
string actory. Those are just a few of the characters
voiced by a four ft eleven dynamo named June Fay.
Why should we know the name June Fay. June Foray
was the go to female voice artist Daddy Candy Daddy
(02:43):
Caddy An. She was the voice of Chatty Cathy, the
doll iconic doll. Oh my gosh, that my sister Mary
Beth had really yeah, this was in the sixties, and
how did you Chatty Cathy work? By the way, did
you pull a train string? And then she would say,
good play, how how do you change my Later on
The Twilight Zone, June showed off her dramatic chops, playing
(03:05):
a sinister, murderous version of Chatty Cathy, Nickie Tina Can
I'm beginning to hate you. Sometimes, June worked blue literally
as the petite prankster Joki on The Smurfs were I'll
throw in one. You may not even know because she
was uncredited. She was the voice of Little Ricky's dog
(03:28):
barking and I Love Lucy? Are you serious? Don't you
know what time it is? Among her many fans, legendary
animator Chuck Jones. While many called June the female Mele Blank,
Jones like to say that mel Blank was the male
June Farrey. Why would you know June farre because she's
(03:51):
part of your childhood. But even though most of us
grew up with her characters, June Farrey isn't widely known today.
It turns out there's a bit of a story behind
those Looney Tunes credits from CBS Sunday Morning and I
heart I'm Morocca and this is mobituaries, this moment June Fay,
(04:20):
July two thousand seventeen, The Woman of a thousand voices.
You know, eat my shorts as a little rude and
I threw it out as just an ad lib, eat
my shorts And next thing, yes, it's on all these
(04:42):
T shirts and it became a catchphrase. You probably wouldn't
recognize Nancy Cartwright if you passed her on the street.
That's because Nancy isn't a famous face. She's a famous voice. Actually,
like June far Ay, she's a lot of famous voices.
For the past three decades, Nancy has played several young
(05:05):
boys on The Simpsons, including Ralph Wigham Nelson Months and
of course don't have a cow man Bart Simpson and
I'm like this perennial ten year old boy, which is
so awesome and best job for me because it's kind
of what I wanted to do, just like me. Nancy
watched a lot of TV growing up, The Jetson's and
(05:27):
the flint Stones, and then in the seventies it was
Mary Tyler Moore. It was nothing was better. Yeah, I
was inspired by Ruth Buzzy on laughing. You know, I'm
saving it until after I'm married. On next Saturday Night,
each Other comes another one of those under the radar
(05:48):
famous people, Bob Bergen, b E. R G. And I
am an actor and a pig, porky pig to be specific,
but that pretty impressive. Look. We have to do the
same amount of work times ten that an on camera
actor does, because it's just with the voice. It's true.
(06:08):
Voice acting doesn't get the credit it deserves. A lot
of cartoon characters aren't even human, but somehow voice actors
are able to make them seem well like people. My
friend Rucy Taylor was Huey, Dewey and Louis for Disney
for years. Rats that was still going the stairs. CA's okay,
that's way I'm quicker at anyway. She used to perform
(06:31):
it like this and people can't see what I'm doing.
But I'm sort of like doing Mr spox vulcan thing
with my fingers. Uh. And I said her, why are
you doing the ducks like this? She goes webbed feet.
I said, those aren't feats. She goes, they are when
I'm performing. You know, it's whatever works for you. A
lot of it is in my face. Bart is Bart's
pretty open. I don't think I change with him, but
(06:51):
like Nelson months, I look at my lips like every
kind of like talking out of the side of my mouth,
you know. And when did I do rap for my eyebrows?
Go really really hi? Hi mom? And to be clear,
we're not editing this. She just did that back to
back to back. Nancy's and Bob's voices make me laugh,
(07:16):
but I wanted to talk to them about a voice
that originally terrified me. In the Looney Tunes episode Broomstick Bunny,
Witch Hazel is a green faced tag with a single
snaggle tooth. Her hair is a mess. She's a witch.
But it wasn't so much what she looked like that
scared me, but how she sounded. That cackle way too
(07:44):
close to Margaret Hamilton's in The Wizard of Oz. You
know her laugh for Witch Hazel. It's so quintessential, right,
which it's funny, it's also terrifying when it was little. Yes,
I loved her. I loved almost as menacing as Witch
(08:06):
Hazel's cackle was the song she sang while she was
preparing her witches brewn a spider some glue. That devilish
ditty ran in a loop through my head as a child.
Freak you out. It freaked me out, and I had
(08:28):
for years running through my mind a cup of tea spider,
some glue. Yeah. In the cartoon, Witch Hazel gloats about
being the ugliest witch of all until Bugs Bunny shows up.
This trick of treating is a pretty nice rackon dressed
as an even uglier witch. I don't remember seeing her
(08:49):
rigetti of the union meetings, and it's such a witty cartoon.
It's hysterical. I'd forgotten that she feels so threatened cause
she's no longer going to be the ugliest witch. That's
I wore new dearie. I'm going to worm all of
your ugly secrets out of you. Gear me now, Coan
does your hair, which Hazel ends up chasing Bugs around
(09:11):
with a butcher knife that shop enough to split a hair.
In the end, of course, Bugs outwit switch Hazel. He
gets her to drink a potion that makes her pretty,
and the pretty woman she turns into at the end
of that short was modeled after the woman voicing her
June for Ay. What was she like physically? Uh? Like
(09:37):
four ft nothing really, yeah, a tiny little thing like
a gymnast guy. Yeah, eight, like you wouldn't believe, and
never gained weight. And she's like this turbo charged, a
little spark plug in a tiny little body. Indeed, June
Foray had stamina. She lived until almost one hundred and
(09:57):
worked nearly to the end. Her story. He began in Springfield, Massachusetts,
where she was born in nineteen seventeen. Not long after
June learned to talk. She was imitating animals, barking at
neighborhood dogs, and doing the impressions for her mother's Bridge
club of the theater actors who came through town. But
June's mother wanted her to be a dancer, so we
(10:19):
enrolled her in tap classes until about with pneumonia and
did June's dancing career before it ever began. So it
was on to piano lessons, but June hated the piano.
Lucky for her, one day, when she was playing baseball,
she was hit by a pitch hey right on her finger.
(10:41):
I was fortunate enough to break my finger playing baseball
with my brother, so I didn't play piano anymore. That's
June for Ay in the year two thousand talking about
the pitch she called a gift from heaven. So I said,
whether I really wanted to be in actress? And so
she and dad got the best drama teaches that there were.
(11:02):
By the time she was fifteen, June was performing in
dramas on local radio station w b z A, where
she developed the granny voice she'd used throughout her career.
Around this time, June's father lost his autoparts business, so
the family moved across the country to Los Angeles. That
was just fine. By June, she'd already written herself a
(11:24):
character called Lady Make Believe, a go get her. Even
back then, June called every radio station in town until
one of them agreed to put Lady Make Believe on
the air. Here's the story about the Happa Doodle. This
is from a recording June made decades later. Our little
Happa Doodle, when you first looked at him, looked just
(11:45):
like a pixie. He had a tiny face that's showed
with merriment. I wrote them with a voice in mind,
and they were gentle stories. There was no violence in
any of them. Fast forward to World War Two, and June,
by now a young woman, was writing and performing on
radio dramas, boosting the morale of an anxious public. Better hurry,
(12:10):
here you are here. She is playing a nurse in
episode of the Cavalcade of America. Yes, already, here's your
alcohol scrubbing. Thanks. June's radio career would end up lasting
well into the fifties. In one of my favorite bits
she ever did, she played a sort of robot interplanetary
(12:32):
beauty queen on the Stan Freeburg Show. Some dope that
turly an tennis at the girl got cube suction cups.
I got shapely wheels. Yeah, they're they're pretty shapely at that.
I see you I in them. One radio show turned
(12:56):
out to be especially important to June. On Smiling Ed's
bus dr Brown Gang, she met a writer director named
Hobart Donovan. Several years later, they married and stayed married
until his death in nineteen seventy six, It's time for
My Favorite Husband, starring Lucille Ball. Hello everybody now one
(13:20):
big radio stars were making the transition into the brand
new medium of TV. Lucille Balls hit radio show My
favorite Husband. Now hurry and get me out of this
type thing. I feel like a ten inch weenie in
a five inch roll. Led to TV's I Love Lucy
that very same year I Want a Divorce. Dady White's
(13:42):
radio appearances on shows like Family Theater, I Make the
Salad Mrs McGee led to a legendary and legendarily long
television career that included hosting Saturday Night Live in two
thousand and ten. Many of you know that I'm I'm
dy eight and a half years old. Well, it's going
to be here for no reason. June occasionally went on camera.
(14:08):
Here she is playing a housewife opposite Johnny Carson on
The Johnny Carson Show in I'm going to be very
firm about this matter of an allowance. Well, I'm telling
you're right now, you're not going to get one. But
acting on TV didn't make use of June's real talent.
Off camera and on Mike, she could become anyone. And
(14:31):
with the Golden Age of animation in full swing, June
Farrey was about to find her voice, come on and
join us. We mentioned earlier how as a kid, June
(14:54):
Farrey was doing voices for anyone who would listen. Well,
Nancy Cartwright and Bob Bergen, Ak Bart Simpson and Porky
Pig started early two for them. The classroom was the
preferred venue. There was one teacher that I kind of
drove crazy because I would do I would do this thing, listeners,
I'm I'm I'm plunking my cheek right now, I can
(15:17):
do it under my chin and doing that, and he
he would walk in the room and it would kind
of drive him nuts. Mr Dwarkin, wherever you are, sir um,
it would kind of and and he never did find
out that that was me. Or if I wanted to
get a drink of water, I would pretend like I
add the hiccups. And the trick to hiccups is you
(15:40):
don't go You don't make it so obvious you just
as you're talking, you just sort of pull back. I
would answer questions in school like either the teacher or
porky pig. When I when I was a kid and
I got sent to the principal's office and the principal
would say, okay, which teacher, I'd say, Mr Snyder, do him?
(16:01):
And if I did him, well, I got to go
back to class. If I did allow the impression, I
got detention. How serendipitous was that that you had a
principal who was incentivizing you to get even better the voices.
There you go. And I had also encouraged me not
to do as well in school because I was like, oh,
this is working for me. Did you dream of being
(16:22):
porky peg even though there already was a porky bag
since I was five? That was my goal in life,
That's all. Folks don't believe him. This is Bob practicing
porky at home as a teenager. Gush. I don't know
why I have to learn the older I plug leadens anyhow.
(16:45):
Some kids want to be a baseball player, some kids
want to be an astronaut, and they alternate back and
forth whether it's Monday or Friday. This is what I
wanted in life. The porky Bob grew up with was
voiced by mel Blank, didn't they say it will be
would be a wonderful lester camping way out here in
the middle of nowhere, who had been doing the pig's
voice for almost forty years, since seven, not long after
(17:09):
the start of what's known as the Golden Age of animation.
That era began with the introduction of cartoons with the
sound Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse spoke his first words in
ninety nine Meanwhile, Warner Brothers debuted Porky Pig, Jaffy Duck,
(17:33):
Elmer Fudd, and of course Bugs Bunny, of cause you
know this means war By the latter half of the century,
production studios like Hannah Barbara created characters specifically for TV,
the flint Stones, the Jetsons, Yogi Bear, and a personal favorite,
snaggle Puss. The kid has class recognizes Tell him now.
(18:00):
June Farrey got into animation through a sort of side door.
In the late nineteen forties, she went under contract with
Capitol Records doing a range of voice of her work
for kids and grown ups. Here she is once again
with satirist Stan Freeburg, doing a parody of the police
drama Dragnet. Ma'am, but I talked to me just a minute, ma'am.
(18:21):
What about not much? Man, Just want to ask you
a few questions. What's your name? Blue Riding Hood? Where
you going to Graham House? What you got in the basket?
What are you trying to take up in the basket? Here?
Soon enough, Disney, which pioneered feature length animation, came calling
with a part in nineteen fifties Cinderella. Now. Cinderella is
(18:44):
nominally about Cinderella, but a lot of the movie focuses
on a devious cat named Lucifer, which was voiced by
June Farrey. He was a mean old thing. He didn't
have any dialogue. But I was working for Disney. Cinderella
(19:07):
was a big hit, and just a few years later,
June was summoned by that other big player in town.
My agent had called me and said, would you work
for Chuck Jones at Warner Brothers? And I said, well,
I'd love to work at Warner Brothers. But who is
Chuck Jones? As June would discover, Chuck Jones was a genius.
(19:31):
Time Magazine once wrote that he made movie goers laugh
as often and as well as Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton.
He directed over two hundred fifty shorts for the studio,
including one of the greatest cartoons of all time, What's
Opera Doc The Webbit Killed the Webit, Killed the Webit
(19:55):
Killed the Webbit. Under his direction, characters may have moved
in exact dreated ways and had extreme facial expressions just
to picture any of them getting hit with a frying pan.
But like any good comedy, these characters tapped into the
audience is very real wants and meads and anxieties. Here's
(20:15):
Chuck Jones in comedy is concerned with small things. That
sort of thing that I am familiar with and you
were familiar with. That is how to get something to eat,
how to get someplace to sleep here, how to uh,
how to get your girl, how to get the boy.
All these things are very important. In June drove her
(20:36):
Cadillac over to the Warner Brothers studios to meet him,
and this gorgeous hunk of men shook hands with me
and he said, I'm Chuck. Well, it was just astounding
that this effervescent, wonderful human being had wanted me to
work for him. Their meeting kicked off a long term collaboration.
(20:57):
June loved working with Chuck Jones. She performed in about
forty of his shorts at Warner Brothers. He would give
her just enough direction and she would deliver the characters
he was after, including Granny and Witch Hazel. Later, after
he left Warner Brothers, Jones continued to hire her for
projects like Tom and Jerry and How the Grinch Stole
(21:19):
Christmas and Ricky Ticky Tavi, about a mongoose protecting a
family of humans. Here's June as the villainous Cobra nagaina.
If you move, I strike, and if you do not move,
I strike, O fleeh Plea. Toward the end of his life,
(21:43):
Jones fought for June to get a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame. She said, he told her, mel
Blank has a star, You're gonna get one if I
have anything to say about it. And in the year
two thousand, June, for a finally got one. By this
point you might be wondering, with all the characters June voiced,
(22:05):
why didn't I know her name? Well, one reason is
that voice actors didn't and still don't, get much recognition.
The animators, the directors, the writers, everybody got credit, but
the actors didn't. I guess we weren't that important, except
we were. But there is one actor who did become
famous for his voice work in the forties, fifties, and sixties,
(22:29):
Mel Blank. If you read the credits to Warner Brothers
cartoons from this goldenest part of the Golden Age, he's
almost always the only voice actor listed them. Bob Bergen
explains Mel Blank had asked for a raise. I think
in the forties and the studio said, no, we're not
(22:51):
going to give you a raise. Instead, the studio gave
Mel blank soul screen credit. No matter how many other
actors were in a cartoon, only his name appeared on screen.
June's name nowhere to be seen. What a way to
run a railroad. I asked her what I did that
bother you? And she said it bothered everybody. Her ego
(23:12):
I think was bruised. It wasn't the only disappointment June
faced in the late nineteen fifties. June played Betty Rubble
in a pilot for Hannah Barbera called The Flagstones Wilma,
When are We Going shown? But by the time The
flint Stones went into production, Joe Barbara had replaced June
(23:32):
with b Benadarrett Finney. We've got our very old baby,
June said, missing out on that show broke her heart.
That much was clear. A few months later, Joe called
my agent said, we feel very bad about June. We'd
like to hire it for something out And I said,
you tell him to take a long walk off a
(23:53):
short pier. And I didn't work for Bill and Joe
for a long time. But June, Foray was about to
start a whole new chapter thanks to a maverick in
the animation world named Jay Ward. Jay Ward had not
planned on a career in animation. After graduating from Harvard
(24:14):
Business School, he opened a real estate office, but on
day one, a runaway lumber truck crashed into his office,
apparently while Ward had been reciting a poem to his
mailman and pinned Ward against a wall. While recovering from
his injuries, he decided he wanted to work in cartoons.
His show Crusader Rabbit, which debuted in ninety, was the
(24:38):
first animated series produced for television. Down in Texas, they're
still talking about the little rabbit that had come down
from the United States to wipe out the warld state
of Texas. Obviously, the rabbit must have been Crusader Rabbit
or grew else would have thought of such a wonderful idea.
The drawings and movements may have been simpler and cheaper
(25:00):
than the Warner Brothers artwork, but the humor was edgier,
more off kilter. June hadn't heard of Crusader Rabbit or
Jay Ward when he came calling in the late fifties,
but he was a fan and he had an idea
for a show that would help define both their careers.
So June tells me that she gets a call from
(25:21):
Jay Ward to meet her for lunch. So I thought,
oh boy, that's an you know, free lunch. And I
met this jocular man with a walrus mustache and he
orders martiniz and June although she could hold her own,
and she said, oh, Jay, I can't. I can't drink
at lunch, and he goes, oh, come on, you'll love this.
(25:45):
We started to talk and he gave me an idea
of a most in the Squirrel, which seemed a little odd,
but after the second Martini, I thought it was one
hell of an idea. Here's Bob's impression of June calling
her agent after that lunch from Member. She was four
ft eleven and had had two Martini's dies. June, I
(26:05):
love this show. It's about a talking moose and a
flag squirrel and it's a complete that tire of the
Cold War, and they want me to play. No, I'm
not that drunk. It's true. This is this show. The
show was Rocky and his Friends. You might know it
as Rocky and Bullwinkle, with June Foray as Rocky Rocket.
(26:28):
Jay Squirrel was his full name. June also voiced the
pots Albanian spy named Natasha Fatal. It managed to be
both smart and supremely silly from start to finish. I'm
not sure if more puns have ever been packed into
a half hour. But as You went to College, ten state,
no state pen. It was a great show. It was
(26:52):
a genius, genius show. The series made good use of
June's acting range. They were segments like Dudley Dowright, which
sent up old fashioned melodramas think Damsel in Distress tied
to railroad tracks, and fractured fairy Tales, which put fresh
(27:14):
spins on classic stories. Just then a remarkable thing happened.
Sleeping Beauty's eyes opened and she sat up. Don't worry, kids,
I wasn't really asleep. Then, Why the big year at
I just wanted to see if I could make it
in show beers. But the stars were Bullwinkle, the moose,
voiced by Bill Scott and June's Rocky Harry Bullwinkles. The
(27:38):
show's about the start. The show premiered in nine and
maybe people may not know this. It aired in prime
time since it was aimed at adults. Steven Spielberg still
remembers watching his parents watch it, As he told The
New York Times, it was the first time that I
can recall my parents watching a cartoon show over my
(28:00):
shoulder and laughing in places I couldn't comprehend. Oh, Minkle,
this is terrible. What kind of game can you play
with girls? Oh? It is really easy. Children should, isn't it.
Rocky and Bullwinkle ran for five years until nineteen sixty four,
living on long afterward in syndication where I discovered it.
(28:22):
It's satire, influencing generations of show creators. We offended nations, countries, politicians,
school teachers, whether people, no matter what. And unlike her
early work with Warner Brothers, June Farrey's name appears in
the credits bequit Me, Booby, and your name will be
(28:46):
in lights. By the nineteen eighties, June Farrey was kind
of a living legend. And I want companionship. I need
to be served if they want to get stuck, I'm
not that kind of Here she is returning to radio
(29:07):
on The Howard Stern Show, reprising the role of Rocky
with Howard as Bullwinkle. In an even more adult version
of the original show. What could I go, Bruik, I've
got a Woody that won't quit. Hey, I told you
she worked Blue sometimes. Now, when another Landmark animated series
(29:28):
was just getting off the ground in the late eighties, naturally,
June made an appearance those Simpsons, which a bunch of savages,
especially the Big Eight Father. June was on The Simpsons one.
She was that's Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson. Again.
They brought her in because she's June for Ray and
to have her come in and say, you know, the
(29:50):
baby bunky bumper babysitting servies Rocky and Bart. It turns
out share something very special Rocky Squirrel in Bartholomy, Jay's Simpson.
That j in there is for j Ward. Did you
know that? I did not know that. So the genealogy
these two great characters are linked. June was revered throughout
(30:12):
the animation world. One reason was her talent. June was
simply a master of her craft. I'm trying to think
of her equivalent on camera. June was the who of
voice acting. You know what this is. It's a big hoo,
but I'm gonna say Meryl Streep, oh oh gosh, was
(30:34):
the Meryl Streep of voice actors, and she was a
genius comedic actress. You know, there's there's certain things you
can't learn no matter who you study. With pitch and timing,
you're born with that. How animated physically was she while
she was doing her voice work, very um and and
as we said earlier, I use a lot of facial expressions,
(30:56):
so watching her do Rocky, I can't do Rocky, but
she would do this with her lips because it added
youth to the character Hoky Smoke. But we go, I
can't do the falsetto, but she would do that with
that character Hoky Smoke. Look there and what we're talking
Tina's She had a little smile on her face, which
was kind of sinister because the k that the doll
kills you super spooky twilight killing people who not really
(31:22):
but I could hurt you, you know. I remember when
we worked on I think it was Space Jam and
watching her do Which Hazel and Granny for that she
was standing as her arms were flailing all over the
place when she was doing Which Hazel double double toil
and trouble, fire burn and cald and bubble. Not bad.
(31:48):
So yeah, she totally physically took on every character. To
hear Bob Bergan tell it, she was also just a
pretty swell person. When is the first time that you
work with her? My very first job doing Leoney Tuns, Yeah,
it was. It was a cartoon called Tiny Toon Adventures,
and I was doing Porky and Tweetie and terrified, you know, um.
(32:12):
And it was at a studio where they had these
partition walls between the actors to block the sound, and
June was right next to me, and I remember her
grabbing my hand and holding my hand as we walked
into the studio and she's doing Granny and I'm doing
Tweetie and you never you know those feelings when he's like,
I think someone's watching me. And I just felt someone
watching me from above. And I looked up and June
(32:34):
was standing. She was tiny, She was standing on a
chair looking below, and she said, oh, Bob, I swear
it was Mel, which, by the way, it didn't sound
a thing like Mel. But that was her way of
just making me feel at home. Nancy Cartwright met June
even later, but she had long felt a kinship. We
had a few things in common. Height is one thing
that we had in common. They were also two women
(32:57):
who famously voiced boy characters. Producers realized that, you know,
you can't hire a real ten year old kid to
do a ten year old voice. His pipes are going
to be changing, and he's going to go through adolescence.
And how many parts would we have now if they
really would have stuck to that just as not economical
at all. Nancy also gives June a lot of credit
(33:17):
for fighting for animation to be treated as an art form.
June led the way to establish the Annie Award so
that voice over actors could get acknowledged because at that
time we weren't being acknowledged with the with an Emmy,
which was wow, that's kind of not okay. And June
was a leader and pushing the Motion Picture Academy to
(33:39):
award an OSCAR for feature length animated movies, which they
finally did in two thousand two. I'd like to think
that Lucifer the Cat, the character she played in Cinderella
half a century before, was looking up that night. But
just as animation was being taken more serious a sleep
(34:00):
in the United States, the opportunities for voice actors began changing.
It's no secret for a while now. The big roles,
the kind that used to be played by voice actors
like June, have been scooped up by actors with familiar faces.
What we will never be those of us who aren't
well known is uh buzz light Year. We won't be
(34:23):
Woody in toy story, but we might be a green
army man. We're called utility players because when you see
in the end of a feature movie I animated feature
additional voices, that's us. This was a change that dismayed June.
She hated it. She did not understand why are they
going to people whose faces are known for a part
(34:44):
that's recorded. But even June's like, even if they're good,
there are people like you and me who can do this,
and why are they going to celebrities. It doesn't make sense.
That really bothered her a lot, But even as the
the street changed around her, it's veneration for June continued
into her nineties. So at the end of her life,
(35:07):
there was a Rocky and bullwinkled Geico commercial and from
what I understand, they brought June in to record it,
and they knew that she was up there in age
just to see what happens, and she didn't have the energy.
She didn't have she was just frail, so they hired
another actress to do it. The other actress's voice ended
(35:31):
up in the ad. Come and I remember that the
commercial was airing, and she called me. She goes. I
don't know what they were complaining about. I sound great.
I know very well the actress who did it. I
won't mention names, but they swore her to keep your
mouth shut out of respect for June, out of compassion.
The industry respected and loved her enough to let her
(35:53):
think it was her which and they paid her. I
don't think it was a stretch to say to the
ad agency, please pay the queen of this industry. I
love everything I do, with all of the parts that
I do, because there's a little bit of me and
all of them. So many of us really did grow
(36:14):
up with June's voices, learning to be irreverent from Rocky
and Bowlwinkle at Christmas time, listening to her pure innocence
as Cindy lu Whu, or like me, being freaked out
by her witch Hazel. Come on, it can't just be me.
But there's this one detail. Bob Bergin told me about
June something I hadn't heard before that I find so
(36:36):
telling about the care and love that she put into
what she did, and it has nothing to do with
her voice. She always dressed to the nines recording cartoons
to show up for work. Yeah, like she was going
over the evening and I would ask her why, and
(36:56):
she said, because I respect what I do and I
want to make a good impression. I'm going to work.
I always. I always used to think she had something
to do after, but no, it was for the job.
She had that much respect for what she was doing.
I remember one time we did have a conversation she
got a little deeper. She said, you know, I think
it comes from my radio days, where we have a
(37:17):
live audience and everybody in the audience is wearing you know,
coat and tie and hats and gloves. The actors did too,
So she just carried that over even though there was
no audience there. She dressed the part. She wasn't wearing
pajama pants just because she wouldn't be seen listen. If
she were still with us, I would say to her,
so in your home studio with COVID, what are you wearing?
(37:38):
Knowing Jewish you'd have the ear rings and the makeup
of all the characters you've played. If one were to
deliver a tribute to June for a which would it be? Alive?
My little, my little edged you're a magnificently, your magnificent,
You're wonderful, the you're wonderful. They it will be all.
(38:00):
I wish there was lets more. And that's all, folks. Well,
it looks as if for a time it's just a
bone run out. You've got the credits, Paul Winkle. I
(38:21):
certainly hope you enjoyed this Mobituary. May I ask you
to please rate and review the podcast. You can also
follow Mobituaries on Facebook and Instagram, and you can follow
me on Twitter at Morocco. Listen to Mobituaries on Amazon
Music or wherever you get your podcasts, and check out
Mobituaries Great Lives Worth Reliving, the New York Times best
(38:44):
selling book, now available in paperback and audiobook. It includes
plenty of stories not in the podcast. This episode of
Mobituaries was produced by Jake Harper and Aaron Shrank. Our
team of producers also includes Wilco, Martin Is Caccero, and
me Morocca. Editing was by Moral Walls, engineering by Sam Bear,
(39:07):
and fact checking by Naomi Barr. Our production company is
Neon Homme Media. Our archival producer is Jamie Benson. Our
theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Indispensable support from
Craig Swaggler, Dustin Gervei, Alan Pang, Reggie Basil and everyone
at CBS News Radio. Special thanks to Roger Rains, Megan Marcus,
(39:29):
and Alberto Robina. Mobituary Senior producer is the Indomitable Aaron Shrank.
Executive producers include Steve Raises and Morocca. The series is
created by Yours Truly and as always on dying gratitude
to Rand Morrison and John Carp for helping breathe life
into Mobituaries
Host
Mo Rocca
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