PERVERSE, ADVERSE AND ROTTENVERSE by June Foray (ebook)
FOREWORD
If "virtue is its own reward", then who in this world of sophistication and fierce competition wants to cling to virtuosity with a pay-off like that?
"Love is blind." Absurd! Our flower children in the 60s dispelled that cock-eyed notion for a decade because of the evolution of various kinds of love – love for humanity, animals, peace and the great outdoors. Love has its eyes realistically open for the first time in our phrenetic world, and it’s hanging right in there.
"Like father like son." Ho, ho, ho! Have you heard the far right, on gay guys lately?
I am resolutely determined to explode all the obsolete shibboleths that our parents drove into our adolescent, little minds, and I’m brazen enough to offer my, perhaps outrageous, judgment of the morals and mores of the establishment. It is my critique on society as it stumbled into the last quarter of the 20th Century and the first of our 21st, having lived by the myths given to us in centuries long gone.
"FOUR STARS (Highest Rating). One of the wittiest, snappiest must-reads of the year. June Foray is best known as the voice of Rocky, of Rocky & Bullwinkle fame, but there's clearly much more to the woman than her ability to put words in the mouth of an animated flying squirrel. This book is a deliciously unexpected foray into the mind of Foray. It's one diabolically clever, entertaining tome."
- Todd David Schwartz, CBS
"I didn't know you were such hot stuff. This is fun. The acid wit that burns right through the surface is really good. I admire the kind of mind that can boil off puns and rhymes."
- Frank Pierson, President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Oscar-winning writer of Dog Day Afternoon
June's 95th Birthday Party on September 16, 2012! With Fred Frees to June's right, and Rose Marie at the end of the table:
TV Academy Bestows Governors Award On Voice Actress June Foray, 2013
Listen to an Interview with June Foray, 2015
Listen to a June Foray audio interview by clicking here.
Check out June Foray's work on CDBaby.com
Article from The Forward newspaper
BIOGRAPHY OF JUNE FORAY
In her long and distinguished career, the versatile and talented June Foray lived up to her nickname the First Lady of cartoon voices. She started acting at twelve on a radio drama. By the time she turned fifteen, she was performing on the air regularly. In the late 1930s, when she was only in her twenties, June had her own starring series Lady Make Believe.
June continued to work regularly on the radio during the following decades on such shows as The Lux Radio Theatre and Sherlock Holmes. In the 1940s, she began doing voiceovers for animated cartoons. In the next decade, she worked at various cartoon studios, particularly Walt Disney, MGM, and Warner Brothers. Her most famous role at Warner Brothers was as Tweety's human owner Granny in the studio's "Tweety and Sylvester" cartoons. Foray made one major live-action film appearance as a high priestess in the 1953 film Sabaka.
In the late 1940s, Capitol Records hired her to voice children's records. Among these records were audio versions of Walt Disney's Pinocchio and Ferdinand the Bull. She also provided support for Stan Freberg's "adult" comedy records on Capitol like St. George and the Dragonet and Little Blue Riding Hood. Foray began working on the new medium of television in the 1950s. She made a few on-camera appearances, particularly on The Johnny Carson Show, but she ultimately made her mark doing voice-overs for television cartoons. In 1959 Jay Ward hired her to perform her most famous roles on the animated TV show Rocky and His Friends. On this critically acclaimed and widely watched show, later called The Bullwinkle Show, Foray voiced one of the animal heroes, Rocky the Flying Squirrel, and one of the human villains, Natasha Fatale. The program lasted until 1964.
As the decades passed, Foray amassed an immense amount of voiceover work in films, television, and even videogames. Among her more notable roles was as the voice of the menacing "Talky Tina" doll in the live-action 1963 Twillight Zone TV episode "Living Doll" and as the voice of the naive and trusting Cindy Lou Who on the 1966 animated TV special How the Grinch Stole Christmas. At the same time, she began crusading for the preservation and celebration of animation. With a group of animation artists, she established a chapter of the Association Internationale du Film d'Animation (translated as International Animated Association ) called ASIFA-Hollywood.
Foray originated the concept of the Annie awards, first presented by ASIFA-Hollywood in 1972. (She would subsequently win the award in 1996 and 1997 for reprising Granny on Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries.) In 1995, the organization honored her by establishing the June Foray Award, bestowed on "individuals who have made a significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation". Foray also contributed to ASIFA Hollywood's Animation Archive Project. She became a member of the Governor's board for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and campaigned to establish an Academy Award for Animation; in 2001, her efforts resulted in the creation of an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
On July 7, 2000, Foray received her own star on the celebrated Hollywood Walk of Fame. In August 2004, she was honored with an international award at the International Animation Film Festival in Hiroshima, Japan for her contributions to the art of animation. In 2012, June became the oldest performer to be nominated for, and then win an Emmy, as the voice of Mrs. Cauldron on The Garfield Show. She was ninety-four at the time. Foray passed away on July 26, 2017 in Los Angeles, California, less than two months shy of her one hundredth birthday.
