June Foray(1917-2017)

Was the last surviving member of "The Great Ones", the voice actors of animation's Golden Era, until her death on July 26, 2017 at age 99.

My mother and father were artistic people. My mother was a singer and a pianist. They enjoyed the opera and the theater and movies. And so they would take us kids to all of the wonderful functions at the Bijou Theater in Springfield, Massachusetts. I wanted to be a stage actress. Then I could come home and impersonate all these people I had seen in the movies. I was an omnivorous reader as well. So, I memorized a lot of classics. The little old lady that I do actually with Tweety and Sylvester, I memorized lines from "The Old Woman Shows Her Medals". It's a play by J.M. Barrie. Oh my goodness, I just did so many impersonations of stars, and read William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde and "The Importance of Being Ernest". It was a very exciting life.