For millions of television viewers, spanning 7 decades, this hurts.
June Foray, the grand dame of cartoon voices, passed away Wednesday, just a few weeks shy of her 100th birthday. To try to list all of her accomplishments would probably take a month or so.
Anyway, it'll be interesting to see if Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, or any other cabler will do a tribute in her honor. Over the next few days, we're going to do our own tribute, with a week long celebration starting on Monday, July 31. For now, we're going to start the ball rolling with one of June's rare "face acting" jobs, when she appeared as herself on the short-lived NBC series, The Duck Factory. Keep an eye open, too, not only for series co-star Don Messick, but also June's partner-in-mirth, Bill Scott, also making a rare appearance before the cameras, in the episode, "The Annies". June appears around the 15 1/2 minute mark.
Rest in peace, June.
6 comments:
"It'll be interesting to see if Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, or any other cabler will do a tribute in her honor."
I doubt CN or Nick will do anything, sadly. I'm guessing most of today's kids don't know who Ms. Foray is.
Even if Cartoon Network, Boomerang or Nickelodeon wanted to run a Rocky & Bullwinkle marathon or something like that, they couldn't because neither Turner nor Viacom have the broadcasting rights to Rocky and Friends anymore. The most we can hope is that maybe CN will air some Looney Tunes shorts in which Granny or Witch Hazel appeared.
@Hobbyfan: also in the cast of The Duck Factory incidentally(and you can see him in the screenshot there) was actor Clarence Gilyard Jr.
A few years after this show, he joined the cast of the Andy Griffith led series Matlock and then in the 1990s he joined the cast of the Chuck Norris led Walker Texas Ranger(the latter is probably what most people would remember him from).
Definitely sad to hear about June Foray :(
I've covered Gilyard's more familiar roles previously, Scoobyfan1. Long time, no see, bro'.
Dreamworks Classic owns the rights to the Jay Ward library these days, so those classics have to be airing somewhere. The ball is in CN's court, but, like Silverstar said, I doubt today's kids would have clue one about June Foray.
Plan is to print what her videography, per Wikipedia, and go from there with future posts.
@Hobbyfan: ah, OK.
It has been a while since I commented. I have been reading your fan fics on toonzone as well and you're doing a good job.
I've been writing at times myself, but I'm kind of lazy. It's too bad that most of today's kids not only probably wouldn't know June foray, but in addition they probably wouldn't know some of the shows that she has done voices for.
I'm lucky as growing up in the 1990s, ducktales, rocky and bullwinkle as well as looney tunes were airing regularly airing on television.
Today's generation of younger kids and high schoolers only know Adventure Time or the amazing world of gumball, etc., and they don't have a clue about these older series.
Heck, most high school students now don't even know the concept of Saturday Morning Cartoons, as my generation probably was the last to grow up with cartoons on Saturdays in network TV.
There are still some younger people that like the older series(like I have heard the original ducktales and teenage mutant ninja turtles themes on dancing with the stars for example).
But for the most part younger people don't know Scooby doo has been around since 1969, or even that there were previous Ben 10, powerpuff girls or teen titans shows.
It's crazy, but it really speaks the differences between people who grew up in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and people that are growing up now.
And it's not helping that the networks, while pushing the current incarnations of shows like Ben 10, TMNT, Powerpuff Girls, etc., don't acknowledge the earlier shows, although Nick did do a homage to the original TMNT cartoon, so let's give them some credit.
June Foray was the last of the old school stars. Let's see if they do something when her centennial comes around in September.
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