Requiescat in pace - June Foray - 1917-2017

Animator and director Chuck Jones said of June Foray, "June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc; Mel Blanc was the male June Foray."

For a cartoon voice artist, there can be no greater tribute.  There were other tributes as well during her long career, many awards, among them she holds the honor of being the oldest person--at age 94--to be nominated for, and win, an Emmy.  June Foray died last week just shy of her 100th birthday.

I take particular pride in noting that she came from my neck of the woods, western Massachusetts.  She was born and raised in Springfield, graduated from Classical High School in that city, and her first work as a voice artist came on the local Springfield radio station WBZA.

Fortunately for us, her work was recorded on video, audio, children's records, a wide array of media--and the sound media that gave her a career will continue to give us enjoyment of her talent.   She lived a century, and her work reflects the media explosion of that remarkable century.  Here is a clip on YouTube of only some of her voice characters.  Have a listen, and look at her cartoon characters.  You can't help but smile.

Chuck Jones 100th Anniversary

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of the birth of animator Chuck Jones.  Below, some snippets of his looniest tunes.  Enjoy.

The Wearing of the Grin (1951)

“The Wearing of the Grin” (1951) serves as our nod to St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow, and gives us not only a funny, and a bit scary, vehicle for Porky Pig, but treats us to a riotous parody of “The Red Shoes”, both the Hans Christian Andersen story and most especially the 1948 movie with Moira Shearer. I can’t help wondering if director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese were aiming for Moira more than Hans Christian. I think they were going after Moira.

Valentine's Day with Pepe Le Pew

Valentine’s Day is for lovers, and Hollywood has given us the ultimate romantic hero back in the days when love was the usual four-letter word we heard on screen. That screen idol is, of course, the dashing Pepé le Pew.

His Oscar-winning cartoon, “For Scent-imental Reasons (1949) establishes his romantic character and the glory of the chase with the time-honored movie device of mistaken identity. This amorous male skunk mistakes a cat splashed by white hair dye for a female skunk. She desperately tries to avoid him as he seduces her with a mangled combination of French and English, proving again, as Peter Sellers would someday learn, there are few things funnier than a really bad French accent.

Mel Blanc, who did most of the voices for the Warner Bros. cartoon division, is in rare form as the posturing gendarme, the distressed owner of the despoiled perfumery, and the libido-driven Pepé.

With Charles Boyer as inspiration, director Chuck Jones, writer Michael Maltese, and Mel Blanc came up with a skunk, who despite the arrogance of his assumption of his irresistibility, is anything but offensive. He is the hero of his own little world, perhaps because no one else will have him, and that is as sad a thought as it is funny.

“Un smelle voux finay,” has got to be one of the funniest and best-delivered lines ever to come out of a Hollywood studio.

The tables are turned when the lady cat falls into a water barrel, loses her faux skunk stripe, and gets a cold. When Pepé is accidentally covered in blue paint, disguising perhaps both his skunk-appearance and his odor, the kitty becomes attracted to his Gallic charm, and he repulsed by her disheveled looks.

“Pardon me, Grandmamma,” he desperately tries to stall her advances, not recognizing the former object of his affection, “Control yourself, Madame!”

But how can she control herself? How could any woman? Pepé, as he knew all along, is every woman’s romantic fantasy. They just don’t draw them like that anymore.

What's Opera, Doc? (1957)

“What’s Opera Doc?” (1957) achieved what few parodies can do, and that is to create something original on its own, a genius apart from the parody. Cartoons, especially classic Warner Bros. cartoons, featured a lot of classical music, and I don’t know how old I was before I realized this Wagner fellow, and his cohorts Franz von Suppé, Rossini, and the like did not write special music for the cartoons. I cannot hear “Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna” without thinking of “Baton Bunny,” (1959) nor hear Gioachino Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” without thinking of the immortal lines, “Yell and scream and rant and rave/it’s no use, you need a shave.”

Still, in “What’s Opera, Doc?” we go beyond popular culture to the heights of a Valhalla where Elmer Fudd as Siegfried, voiced by Arthur Q. Bryan, conjures supernatural forces in his spear and magic hewmet, “Be vewy quIET…I’m hunting WAbbits.” We know this is to be a special performance just by they way we hear the orchestra tuning up over the opening credits. Excitement builds.

Is there nothing so majestic, so savage, so telling of human passions as, “Kiwuh da wabbit, kiwuh da WABBIT, WIWUH DA WABbit?” My only regret is that there seems to be no film footage of Mr. Bryan, and Mel Blanc, who voiced Bugs Bunny, singing operatic duets in a sound recording studio. Did they not know they were creating magic that should have been documented? Or, was schlepping to the studio to lay down a few voice tracks about a hunter and a rabbit so ordinary that it was considered routine? Impossible.

The other dynamic duo, director Chuck Jones and writer Michael Maltese, could have been filmed as well as they story boarded this cartoon. That, too, might have been magic.

Bugs makes his entrance in drag on an obese horse. Why Bugs Bunny in drag is always so funny, I have no idea, but it is. After Elmer falls in love with the ravishing Brunhilde, and after an impromptu ballet, the strains of “Retoin my wuv” are heard in Mr. Blanc’s Brooklyn tenor and Mr. Bryan’s front parlor baritone in perhaps the most romantic duet ever performed. Seriously. No, really.

Of course, this being an opera, the fates intervene and Elmer discovers his wovwey Brunhilde is only that rabbit, and his rage bears the fires of hell. He calls upon the very lightning to smite the rabbit, whom he carries, with remorse, in his arms to a peaceful eternal rest. As Bugs says, “What’d you expect in an opera? A happy ending?”

It is more than perfect parody, it is a perfect 6-minute opera.

I wish Wagner could have seen it. His rage would have been almost as spectacular as Elmer’s. He had no sense of humor.

That's all for this week. See you Monday.