The End - the Classic Film Obituary thread 2017 [CLOSED]

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June Foray, the voice of “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show’s” Rocky the Flying Squirrel and his nemesis Natasha Fatale of Boris and Natasha fame in the early 1960s and a key figure in the animation industry, died Thursday. She was 99.

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Foray was born June Lucille Forer in Springfield, Mass., and she was doing vocal work in local radio dramas by the time she was 12. She continued working in radio after her family moved to Los Angeles after she graduated from high school, following her dream of becoming an actress. She even had her own “Lady Make Believe” radio show that showcased her vocal talents, and she appeared regularly on network shows such as “Lux Radio Theater” and “The Jimmy Durante Show.”

She met her future husband, writer and director Hobart Donavan, while working on “Smilin’ Ed’s Buster Brown Show,” then moved on to work with Steve Allen on morning radio show “Smile Time,” in which she’d play “everyone and everything. It was there that I perfected my Spanish accent and where my booming Marjorie Main-type voice got a good workout,” she recalled in her autobiography.

After “Smile Time,” Foray found work with Capitol Records, where she recorded many children’s albums and where she first met and worked with Stan Freberg and Daws Butler, with whom she recorded several comedy records, including “Dragnet” parody “St. George and the Dragonet.” Later she was a regular cast member of “The Stan Freberg Show” on CBS Radio.

Foray got her start in the animation business when someone from the Walt Disney studio called her to ask if she could do the voice of a cat. “Well, I could do anything,” recalled Foray in an interview with Variety. “So he hired me as Lucifer the cat in ‘Cinderella,’ and then I started to work for Disney.” Much of her work for Disney was uncredited, including work as a mermaid and squaw in “Peter Pan.” But she starred as the voice of Hazel the Witch in the 1952 Donald Duck short “Trick or Treat,” using a voice that would later morph into “Looney Tunes” character Witch Hazel. She would often say that she voiced a long litany of cartoon witches, many of them named Hazel.

About the same time, the 1950s, Foray worked on a series of cartoons by such animation pioneers as Tex Avery and Walter Lantz. For Warner Bros., she became Granny in the “Tweety and Sylvester” cartoons and Alice Crumden in the cartoon parody of “The Honeymooners,” “The Honey-Mousers.” At Warner Bros. she met Chuck Jones, for whom she worked on several “Looney Tunes” cartoons, starting with “Broom-Stick Bunny” in 1956. She would later star as Cindy Lou Who in Jones’ cartoon adaptation of Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

She also voiced Mother Magoo in the “Mister Magoo” series.

But her greatest fame came with Jay Ward’s satirical “Rocky and His Friends,” which would later become “The Bullwinkle Show,” eventually known collectively as “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show,” which ran from 1959 through 1964. Foray did most of the female voices for the show, including the voice of Russian villain Natasha Fatale, as well as that of Rocket J. Squirrel. She also voiced characters for other Jay Ward cartoons, such as “Dudley Do-Right” (Nell Fenwick), “George of the Jungle” (Jane) and “Tom Slick” (Marigold).

It wasn’t only in animation that Foray got to use her myriad vocal talents. She voiced the demonic doll Talky Tina in “The Twilight Zone” episode entitled “Living Doll” in 1963.

Despite her prolific career, she had to wait until 2012 for an Emmy nomination; she went on to win a Daytime Emmy for her performance as Mrs. Cauldron on Cartoon Network’s “The Garfield Show.”

A documentary about her life, “The One and Only June Foray,” was produced in 2013.

www.theguardian.com/film/2017/jul/31/jeanne-moreau-star-of-jules-et-jim-dies-aged-89



Jeanne Moreau, the actress best known for her performance in French New Wave classic Jules et Jim, has died aged 89 at her home in Paris, her agent has said.

A director, screenwriter and singer as well as a stage and screen actor, Moreau came to prominence with a series of roles in films considered part of the French New Wave, including Lift to the Scaffold and Jules et Jim. She also appeared in a number of Hollywood films, such as The Last Tycoon and Orson Welles’s adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial.

In a statement on Twitter, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, paid tribute to Moreau, saying that the actor “embodied cinema” and was a free spirit who “always rebelled against the established order”.

Moreau was born in Paris in 1928. Her father was a French restaurateur; her mother was a cabaret dancer from Oldham who moved to Paris in her 20s and later performed at the Folies Bergère. In a 2001 interview with the Guardian, Moreau credited her mother’s heritage with influencing her own somewhat detached personality. “People in France could see I was different from the usual actresses of that time. Maybe that’s why I attracted so many Anglo-Saxon directors like Orson Welles and Tony Richardson. In French, one says ‘Ma langue maternelle est le français [my mother tongue is French].’ But I say: ‘Ma langue maternelle est l’anglais.’ My feminine side is English,” she said.

Moreau began her acting career on stage, and became a leading figure in the Comédie-Française. In the 1950s she moved to film, and achieved national recognition with starring roles in two Louis Malle movies: the film noir Lift to the Scaffold and the drama Les Amants (The Lovers). The films proved controversial, with Les Amants becoming the subject of an obscenity case in the US supreme court, yet both are now considered landmark works. In 1960, Moreau best actress prize at Cannes for Seven Days… Seven Nights.

But it was Jules et Jim that made Moreau an international name. Directed by François Truffaut, the stylish 1962 film was set during the first world war and depicted a love triangle between Moreau’s character, Catherine, and the titular Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre). Jules et Jim has proved hugely influential, becoming synonymous with the French New Wave movement and regularly appearing on best-of lists.

Moreau almost appeared in another landmark 1960s role – Mrs Robinson in The Graduate, but turned down the part. Her career continued into her later years. In 1992, she won the César award for best actress for her performance in The Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea. She also directed two films of her own: Lumière (1976) and L’Adolescente (1979).

A notoriously difficult interviewee, Moreau responded with characteristic sharpness when asked if she ever felt nostalgic for the French New Wave. “Nostalgia for what? Nostalgia is when you want things to stay the same. I know so many people staying in the same place. And I think, my God, look at them! They’re dead before they die. That’s a terrible risk. Living is risking.”