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