June Foray Quotes: 7 Sayings From Legendary Voice-Over Artist

Legendary voiceover artist June Foray, who has provided voiceover work for hundreds of characters — including "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show’s," "Rocky the Flying Squirrel," and Tweety’s owner Granny in the early 1960s —died Thursday at the age of 99.

Her death was confirmed by a close friend, Dave Nimitz, on Facebook. "With a heavy heart again I want to let you all know that we lost our little June today at 99 years old," he wrote.

Foray voiced Betty Rubble in "The Flintstones pilot" (when the Flintstones family was known as the Flagstones) and Peter Parker’s Aunt May in "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends."

According to her bio on the movie database website IMDb , "she started in the voice field at the age of 12, at a time when she was already doing old lady voices… By age 15 she was writing her own show for children, "Lady Makebelieve," in which she also provided voices. June dabbled in both on-camera acting and voice work, but was particularly talented in voice characterizations, dialects and accents."

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Here are some quotes and sayings from the legendary voiceover artist about her career and her characters collected from Brainy Quote, Goodreads, and the Hollywood Reporter.

• "Someone at Disney heard one of the records and called me in to do the sounds of Lucifer the Cat in Cinderella." — about her first big-screen job in animation.
• "When they came to you for your line, you had to be ready and you had to get it in one." — about the challenges of working as a voiceover artist.
• "I spent most of this afternoon writing a new introduction for my autobiography."
• "For reasons that will become obvious, I call this story, 'There's a Horse in My Living Room.' It's about how I wound up with a horse in my living room." ― Did You Grow Up with Me, Too?: The Autobiography of June Foray.
• "For the flip side of the record, we preformed yet another Dragnet parody, 'Little Blue Riding Hood.' The announcer, Hy Averback, explained that the color had been changed to prevent an investigation. Those were the McCarthy witch-hunting days and no one wanted to get caught being 'Red.' So of course, I was Little Blue Riding Hood with a sweet gentle little voice different from the maiden who was almost devoured by the dragon. I was also Grandma." ― Did You Grow Up with Me, Too?: The Autobiography of June Foray.

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• "I love the [Rocky and] Bullwinkle show because it’s so mordantly witty. … But I love everything I do with all of the parts that I do because there’s a little bit of me in all of them. We all have anger and jealousy and love and hope in our natures. We try to communicate that vocally with just sketches that you see on the screen and make it come alive and make it human." ― about her favorite cartoon character
• "I had wanted to be on the stage, but the radio intrigued me even at 12, so when I was 15, I had the hubris to go to the [local] radio station and say, ‘Look, I’m a good actress and I can do all these parts. Will you let me join your drama group?’ And they did." ― about how she ended up becoming a voice over artist