June Foray: Legendary ‘Rocky And Bullwinkle,’ ‘Twilight Zone’ Voice Talent, Annie Awards Creator Dies At 99
June Foray, the veteran voice actress best-known for playing Rocky in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, passed away on Thursday at the age of 99, just two months shy of her 100th birthday. The news was confirmed by her caretaker, Dave Nimitz, in a Facebook post on Thursday evening.
As noted by Deadline, Foray was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, on September 18, 1917, and was only 12-years-old when she began getting work as a voice actress, starting out in local radio dramas. But it was in the 1950s and 1960s when Foray reached iconic status as a voice talent, typically voicing female characters such as Granny, from Warner Brothers’ Tweety and Sylvester cartoons, and Cindy Lou Who, from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. According to CBS Los Angeles, she was also a prominent voice talent in animated movies, including 1950’s Cinderella, where she played Lucifer the cat.
June Foray’s most recognizable role, however, was that of an anthropomorphic male squirrel named Rocket J. Squirrel, or Rocky for short, in the 1959-1964 animated series The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. She also voiced the show’s female antagonist, Natasha Fatale, and reprised her role as Rocky in the 2000 live action/animated movie The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle.
June Foray, voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel, dies at 99 https://t.co/kQG0diyIcg pic.twitter.com/yt6I8qHWRu
— The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) July 27, 2017
Aside from her roles as a cartoon voice talent, June Foray left an indelible mark on fans of the original Twilight Zone series, voicing the evil talking doll “Talky Tina” in the 1963 episode, “Living Doll.” As recalled by FlavorWire, which ranked it among its top 10 Twilight Zone episodes, “Living Doll” centered on an overbearing stepfather played by Telly Savalas, who gets tormented by his daughter’s new doll, to the point of “Talky Tina” threatening the man’s life.
“Living Doll” would end up making a huge impact on American pop culture, helping inspire such films as the Child’s Play series, and also getting lampooned on The Simpsons‘ “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episode in 1992. In 2014, Entertainment Weekly ranked the aforementioned Simpsons spoof as the fifth-best “Treehouse of Horror” segment of all time.
Beyond her lasting impact as a voice actress, June Foray’s legacy also includes the Annie Awards, an annual award ceremony for excellence in the field of animation that had started in 1972. The Annies, as described on the Awards’ official homepage, were “June’s baby,” due to Foray having come up with the idea, upon realizing that the animation industry didn’t have its own award ceremony like the Oscars for the film industry, or the Grammys for music. The Awards were named by Foray’s husband, the late Hobart Donavan, who simply abbreviated the word “animation” when coming up with the name.
According to Deadline, June Foray was married to Bernard Barondess from 1941 to 1945, then to Hobart Donavan from 1954 to his death in 1976. No cause of death has been announced as of this writing.
[Featured Image by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]
