June Foray’s many voices were an indelible soundtrack for generations of eager cartoon watchers. During her decades-long career, Ms. Foray, who died on Wednesday in Los Angeles, spoke for dozens of characters, ranging from mischievous miscreants to wide-eyed innocents. Here are some of our favorites.
Rocky and Natasha
Ms. Foray was probably most identified as two characters on “Rocky and His Friends” (later “The Bullwinkle Show”): Rocky the flying squirrel, protagonist and friend of Bullwinkle, the moose, and Natasha Fatale, a duplicitous spy and partner of Boris Badenov.
Ms. Foray told the Archive of American Television in an interview in 2000 that she had wanted Rocky to sound like “an all-American squirrel,” and that since Natasha came from the fictional country of Pottsylvania, not Russia, she had tried to “make her sort of a continental.”
Nell Fenwick
Ms. Foray also voiced another memorable character on Rocky and Bullwinkle, Nell Fenwick. Nell was the long-suffering, often-imperiled fiancée of the hapless Canadian mounted policeman Dudley Do-Right. She was often captured and tied to train tracks by the villain, Snidely Whiplash, and though she had a melodic voice, she could be stern.
Witch Hazel
Elderly women were a staple for Ms. Foray, among them Granny in the Looney Tunes cartoons that featured Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird, the grandmother in Disney’s Mulan (1998) and, maybe most memorably, Witch Hazel, a cackling sorceress who tangled with Bugs Bunny, who was voiced by Mel Blanc.
Mrs. Cauldron
Another witch, Mrs. Cauldron on “The Garfield Show,” led to an Emmy for Ms. Foray. Mrs. Cauldron, who rode a vacuum cleaner instead of a broom, helped Odie the dog briefly grow smart enough to foil Garfield’s tricks and turn the overweight cat into a duck.
Wheezy the Weasel and Lena Hyena
Ms. Foray also had parts in movies, including two different anthropomorphic animals in Robert Zemeckis’s film noir-cartoon crossover “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988). She played a villainous weasel and an aggressively amorous hyena.
Cindy-Lou Who
And in the cartoon version of Dr. Seuss’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” (1966) Ms. Foray played Cindy-Lou Who, a towheaded child who catches the Grinch stealing her family’s Christmas tree and believes him when he says he’s just repairing a light.
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