June Foray: Woman of Many Voices

 There's a lot one could say about June Foray, the legendary voice actress who would have turned 107 this coming Wednesday. For over five decades, she voiced countless cartoon characters and worked for practically every animation house in the business. However, Chuck Jones put it best when he said, "June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc. Mel Blanc was the male June Foray."

As amazing as Foray was, unfortunately, I've seldom spoken about her on this blog. I think it's long past time that changes, and what better time to do it than now? From the Patriot-News on May 18th, 1969, here's a great little retrospective on June's career to that point. The article focuses on her voice work and even looks at some of her weaknesses. Yes, even someone as talented as June Foray had 'em.

Vocals Without Music

By Stan Maays

   

     If June Foray had grown a few inches taller, she might not have become the queen of female voices for the past 20 years.
    "Because I am short—not even five feet—I had no dignity to command on a stage," declared Miss Foray. "I couldn't play leading ladies, so I had to concentrate on character roles. I began playing old ladies because it didn't matter how I looked."
    Miss Foray reluctantly allowed as how maybe "it's God's gift" that she has the ability to do so many things with her voice. This realization first came to her when she was a 12-year-old drama student. A teacher admitted, "I can't teach you anything more."
    "Now that I'm older it doesn't matter any more," she shrugs. I'll be working a lot longer than some because I can do a very young voice (she slipped into a breathless ingenue) or an old voice like Marjorie Main (a perfect impression) and not be concerned how I look on or off camera."

    

    Miss Foray's remarkable talents will be displayed in The Pogo Birthday Special, the first animated musical special to be based on Walt Kelly's comic strip. NBC-TV airs the half-hour show May 18.
    Miss Foray does Pogo, Miss Mam'selle Hepzibah and a "half dozen other voices that have one-liners." The voices of Pogo's other Okefenokee Swamp pals—Porky Pine, Basil, Howland Owl and Churchly La Femme are supplied by Walt Kelly, Chuck Jones and Les Tremayne.
    With her old friend Stan Freberg, she has worked on a number of albums and radio commercials. In cartoons she has done Bullwinkle, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker; she has worked for Walt Disney, Jay Ward and Hanna and Barbera; the credits are endless. She's the sexy voice in Bandini commercials, plus voices in Uniroyal, United Air Lines, Kellogg's, Cheerios, Mustang and Dodge plugs on radio and TV.
    When the late Ann Sheridan gallantly tried to finish the season of Pistols and Petticoats but just couldn't carry on anymore, it was June Foray the producers turned to for help. She rerecorded dialogue Miss Sheridan's weakened voice couldn't sustain. Her lip-sync of Miss Sheridan's voice was perfect.

   

     If there's a chink in Miss Foray's talented armor it's a minor one.
    "I'm a lousy singer," she announced, unabashed. "I have a good ear, except when it comes to singing. Bobbie Gentry asked me to sing as a character voice in her new album and it took some doing on my part."
    Miss Foray, who lives in a nearby suburb with her husband, writer Hobart Donavan, has joined the growing list of nonsmokers. Her keen ear began detecting a loss of range in her voice control four years ago.
    "I figured it wasn't worth it if it affected my voice," she reports. I'm very fortunate to be the master of my vocal chords, but I wasn't when I was smoking."

Video of the Week: Don Messick at the 50th Golden Awards

You all know I love getting an opportunity to talk about all things Don Messick, and seeing as this past weekend marked what would've been his 98th birthday, now seemed like a fine chance to do so. For this week's video segment, I've got an interview Messick did during the 50th Golden Awards event in 1989, where Messick acted as the master of ceremonies. This interview was conducted by Paul Maher, an individual who interviewed many great names in classic animation, and this was one of several talks he had with Don. Some of the topics covered in this interview are his voices for Hanna-Barbera, his relationship with Daws Butler, and his more recent work in animation. 

Doug Wildey Draws on Reality

 What's the first thing that pops into your head when you think of Jonny Quest? Most likely, it's the artwork of Doug Wildey. Born on May 2nd, 1922, Wildey may have been the most influential member of the original Jonny Quest crew. Not only did he design many of the characters (save for Bandit, who was designed by Dick Bickenbach), but he also worked on designing the technology and look of the Quest world. You really can't think of Jonny Quest without thinking of his characters and vehicles, accompanied by the show's iconic shadows. 

Wildey had a colorful career that spanned over around fifty years. He worked for virtually every major comic book publisher, from DC Comics to Atlas (you may know them better by their later name, Marvel Comics). He also had a long career in animation, starting with Space Angel in 1962 and continuing into the eighties with titles like Mister T and Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos. Wildey would pass away at the age of 72 on October 4th, 1994. The TV movie Jonny Quest vs. The Cyber Insects, released a year later, was dedicated to his memory.

Seeing as this is Questember, it would feel wrong if I didn't feature something on Wildey, and I've got something that does that and more. On January 9th, 1973, the Thousand Oaks Star sat down and had an incredible discussion with Wildey. The piece is primarily focused on his then-currently-running newspaper strip Ambler, but it also includes some great insight into Wildey's life and artistic sensibilities. Enjoy!

In a youth-oriented world, He illustrates reality

    "Youth today are the smartest, brightest, sharpest people to come along. They know where their heads are at concerning politics, morality, and the general state of the world as a whole—not just their own backyard."
    Believe it or not, the person making the above statement is well over 30 years of age. Born and raised in Yonkers, N.Y, Doug Wildey is a professional illustrator-writer-cartoonist and he's pretty positive when it comes to how great the youth of today really are.
    "What people really don't understand, they figure has to be bad," Wildey said. He feels that today's young people are misunderstood.
    This type of thinking prompted Wildey to create the first realistic comic strip taken on by a major syndicate in five or six years. "Ambler," syndicated by the Chicago Tribune - N.Y. News Snyidcatye, Inc. is the new adventure panel beginning today in the News-Chronicle.
    "There seemed a long time between new story strips, and there was seemingly a gap in subject matter," Wildey observed.
    He added "It's not only the kids, but people interested in the youth movement generally," that prompted him to action. 

    Ambler is a 29-year-old folk-rock singer who travels the expanse of America in search of the songs of the people at their source. He knows no roots and in his travels, he meets real people—explores a real world.
    Though "Ambler" is not a complete personal reflection of the cartoonist's life, several things about the young man mirror Wildey's life. Several times, like Ambler, Wildey has pulled up stakes and ventured into a world of varying jobs. Before becoming a professional illustrator, he was a mailboy, chauffeur, warehouseman, and oil salesman.
    The Woodland Hills resident portrays "Ambler" as the ideal of what many of today's youths are searching for. Seeking to be in line with the world and themselves, "something the older generation never had the freedom or the desire to do," is the quest which Wildey unfolds.
    In a way, he draws upon his own personal experience in traveling around the country. In doing so he can expand upon areas not covered before in American comics.
    In doing so, Wildey explains, he follows the theme of a real world—not a fantasy world—a world that young people today can associate with. Ambler is not a super hero, but a real guy in the real world.
    Picking the characters for his comic panel has evolved in several ways. For the main character -- the name Grayson Ambler just seemed to fit the character he wanted. In some cases characters mirror people that Wildey has known. 
    Above all, Wildey is attempting to get away from stereotyped individuals. An example is the panel character "Jock" Black, Negro, pro-football player.
    "Most things on television or in novels portray the Negro as being downtrodden, from the ghetto. But there are plenty of blacks in this country who have not had a tough time. Jock Black is one of them," Wildey said.
    Prior to Ambler WIldey's one previous experience in newspaper comics was as illustrator of Leslie Charteris's "The Saint."
    Moving to Los Angeles in 1962 from Tucson, Ariz., Wildey was staff art director at the Hanna-Barbera studio in Hollywood. During this time he created the Jonny Quest cartoon series for television.
    His enthusiasm for cartooning-illustrating came "because it seemed the best way to write, direct, and cast a show all myself," Wildey grins.
    Always working at home, he considers himself the "reverse of the traveling salesman—I'm always around and underfoot."
    Well-known in the field, Wildey is often recognized at conventions and serves on cartoonist panels. He feels the Ambler strip is "a reasonably big one" and hopes it is a little bit more on the "cerebral side" than others of today.
    The adventure strip created purely "for entertainment," is currently being run in some 50 nationwide newspapers, including: Costa Mesa; Houston and San Antonio, Tex; Buffalo, N.Y.; Montreal, and Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Unreleased Jonny Quest Action Figures From Playing Mantis

 If there was ever a Hanna-Barbera cartoon that deserved its own action figure line, it was Jonny Quest. There were no figurines of the characters during the original show's run (unsurprising, as G.I. Joe, the toy that coined the term "action figure" had only just debuted), but there have been several lines offered in the decades since. One of the more interesting ones, in my opinion, was a line that never even made it to retail. Credit goes to the Classic Jonny Quest fansite for showcasing these.

Above is a line of Jonny Quest action figures that appeared at the 2000 Toy Fair. Playing Mantis were the masterminds behind these. They went under somewhere around 2006, but they offered a wide variety of figurines, covering everything from Peanuts to the 1999 comedy flick Mystery Men (for the uninitiated, that's the movie where the music video for Smash Mouth's "All Star" comes from). These toys were developed at a time where the action figure world was booming, as dozens of companies rushed to snatch up licenses both old and new. Quest seemed like a great pick for a toyline during this time, as I'm sure collectors would've loved to pick up figures from a nostalgic favorite. Sadly, these never came out, and I have no clue as to why. Perhaps Playing Mantis were in some financial troubles? Or, maybe the failure of the Real Adventures toyline a few years earlier left a bad taste in the mouths of retailers? Whatever the reason, we didn't get them, and that's a real shame. While there have been several figures created of Quest and his comrades, these feel the most like the animated versions had jumped off the screen and into your hands.

Adding further salt into the wound, it looks like had this line taken off, we would have gotten figures of Jezebel Jade (referred to here as Jade Kenyon) and Dr. Zin. Neither of these characters have been represented in plastic before or since this attempt, so this would have been a really comprehensive line had it come to fruition. Not much more you can say other than "Oh well!"

Video of the Week: Time is Running Out For Jonny Quest

 Growing up as an avid viewer of Boomerang back in the 2000s, one of my favorite aspects of the channel was the shorts played during commercial breaks. As Boomerang was initially an ad-free network, they were able to fill this time with some great stuff you wouldn't see anywhere else. Chief among these were music videos based on some of the Hanna-Barbera classics, and if you ask me, one of the more memorable ones was "Time is Running Out", based on the original Jonny Quest.

Featuring a redo of the classic theme by the James Taylor Quartet, the video is presented through this lovely board game setting. Dr. Quest has been abducted by an octopus, and it's up to Jonny, Hadji, Race, and Bandit to save him. The song itself is a great update to the original, and the video features all kinds of references and callbacks to the series. Watch it below for the first time, or if you watched Boomerang as much as I did, your millionth. 

Meet Jonny and Hadji

While Jonny Quest had a colorful cast of heroes and villains, there were two characters in particular that the main age demographic identified with. Those were the main character Jonny Quest and his best friend, Hadji. Unlike most Hanna-Barbera kid characters like Elroy Jetson, they were both voiced by actual child actors. Quest was portrayed by Tim Matheson, while Hadji was Danny Bravo.

Nowadays, Matheson is well known for his acting and directing credits, but Jonny Quest was his first leading role. He worked with Hanna-Barbera on a few more adventure series before moving on to bigger projects, but he continues to credit Quest for kickstarting his career. Matheson still does the occasional voice role, too, and has even lent his voice to some of the later Jonny Quest projects. Today, I share a piece that ran in the September 13th, 1969 edition of the Quad-City Times focusing on Matheson and his many talents in the entertainment industry. It's not focused on his animation work, but it does contain some interesting tidbits about that period of his career along the way.

Tim Matheson Is A Double Threat

By Marilyn Lane
Entertainment Editor

    

An engaging young man—both in smile and personality—visited the Quad-Cities to introduce a new character to TV this fall. Tim Matheson will play the continuing role of 19-year-old Jim Horn beginning Wednesday on "The Virginian" on Ch. 6.
    "I play a partner of an older sidekick who likes to roam around. We stop by Shiloh Ranch and I decide to stay. I guess it's because of the good cooking," Matheson said as a grin easily engulfed his entire face creating deep "laugh creases."
    Matheson didn't exactly look like a cowboy. Light gray, wide wale corduroy slacks were topped by a brown and gold striped sweater and grey-green jacket distributed over his 6 '1 1/2' frame.
    Matheson is only 21, but his entry into what he calls a "great business" began at age 13, and then in a writing capacity. He supplied scripts to Hanna-Barbera for cartoons and also served as cartoon voice. He was involved with "Jonny Quest," "Sinbad Jr.," "Young Sampson," "Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines," and worked on "Space Ghost" with Gary Owens of "Laugh-In" fame. 

    The Burbank native wrote two novels as a youngster but they didn't get published. He is now working on a script for the "Virginian" which he hopes will be purchased. The show is his first regular series work and has cut into his writing time so he has given up most of the cartoon work.
    Matheson thinks of series work as a great opportunity for honing his craft. "I'm pleased to be on the series. We've done 10 shows and you learn so fast. You get a couple of years training in a season."
    Matheson spent a year at San Fernando College and is now taking voice lessons. But some things have to be learned the hard way. He had riding lessons as a child, but in one scene during filming of the "Virginian" he sat on a rein.
    He didn't want to make the obvious correction on camera, but he couldn't control the direction of the horse which proceeded to knock over some fake shrubbery. Obviously, the scene had to be reshot.
    Married a year this month, the couple have just purchased an old English cottage in Hollywood. His wife is actress Jennifer Leak whom he met while both were making the movie "Yours, Mine and Ours." The 5 '7" redhead from Wales has interested her husband in antique collecting and one of their weekend leisure activities includes attending antique auctions.

With Jonny discussed, let's take a look at his best friend, Hadji, who I'd argue was the most groundbreaking character in the entire series. He was perhaps the first recurring person of color character in an animated series, and while there are elements to his character that are undoubtedly stereotypical, this is something that should not be overlooked when discussing the series. Hadji was every bit as smart and as skillful as Quest, making him a good equal to the character, rather than a mere sidekick. He was portrayed by child actor Danny Bravo. Bravo was frequently featured in Latino roles, and was great at utilizing accents, which likely led to his role as Hadji. He continued to act for a few years after Quest's cancellation, with his final role being an uncredited voice on an episode of The New Adventures of  Huckleberry Finn in 1969. He subsequently retired from the industry. 

This is where I'd share an interview with Bravo, but unfortunately, I couldn't find anything on him. Because of this, I thought I'd instead share this short clip of Bravo in an on-camera role. This is from the 1966 film For Pete's Sake, which was also Bravo's final movie role. It's a brief scene, but for many of you, it may very well be the first time you've seen Bravo. Enjoy!

Coming Fall 1964: Jonny Quest File 037

 It is 1964, and Hanna-Barbera's foray into primetime television hasn't gone as strong as planned. Though The Flintstones was a smash hit, its follow-ups, The Jetsons and Top Cat, failed to gather an audience and were canceled after one season. Perhaps, the company thought, it was time to do something a bit different. A bit more adventurous, if you will. Enter Jonny Quest, or, as it was initially titled, Jonny Quest File 037.

In Quest, there were no wacky gags or talking animal sidekicks. It was an action-adventure story that saw its title character go up against robots, lizards, and all other kinds of strange beings. Instead of the quirky and warm designs of Dick Bickenbach, Doug Wildley gave the show a distinct, comic-book-esque art style. It was choices like these and more that made Jonny Quest instantly stand out from not only other Hanna-Barbera shows, but also early TV animation in general. As it was so different from anything else at the time, there was plenty of coverage on the show in the months leading to its release. Just take a look at this piece from the July 5th, 1964 edition of The El Dorado Times previewing the series. For me, the highlight of this piece has to be what Joe Barbera says won't be in the show. No offense to him, but I'm not sure he was watching the same show as the rest of us.

Television

By Cythia Lowry
AP Television-Radio Writer

    HOLLYWOOD (AP) - It's taken quite awhile, but the comic strip is finally coming to network television.
    The creators of "Yogi Bear" and "Huckleberry Hound," have now fathered a cartoon feature called Jonny Quest," which as a new ABC entry will be a combination of humor and adventure. It will depart radically from the usual cartoon approach in that the characters will be humans and drawn with an attention to style and detail reminiscent of the wartime "Terry and the Pirates," but with overtones of "Flash Gordon," "Prince Valiant" and "Tom Swift."
    A comic strip actually was tried several seasons back when an animated "Dick Tracy" was seen on some stations, but the new venture is much more sophisticated and elaborate.

    ABC will launch the series in a 7:30-8 p.m. Friday spot, now reserved on all networks for programs attractive to small fry.
    Joe Barbera who with partner Bill Hanna dreamed up the show, says that because it is expected the children will watch it avidly, there will be no mad scientists or two-headed monsters. Nor will there be shooting and other gory disposition of villains.