June Foray, Voice of ‘Bullwinkle Show’s’ Natasha and Rocky, Dies at 99

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.

Her close friend Dave Nimitz, confirmed her death on Facebook, writing “With a heavy heart again I want to let you all know that we lost our little June today at 99 years old.”

Foray was also the voice behind Looney Tunes’ Witch Hazel, Nell from “Dudley Do-Right,” Granny in the “Tweety and Sylvester” cartoons and Cindy Lou Who in Chuck Jones’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” among hundreds of others.

Bea Benaderet didn’t voice Warner Brothers Granny though - that was June Foray.

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Bea Benaderet was the original voice of Granny, along with Betty Rubble.

Natasha Fatale has nothing on the transformed Witch Hazel in "Broom Stick Bunny"

Witch Hazel was the character that would leave hair pins spinning in her wake when she zipped off on her broom, correct? Some of those details that I just accepted and barely noticed when I was a kid, jump right out at me when I view that work all these years later. It just gets more magical with the passage of time.

Didn’t think too many people remembered Burns and Allen.

All of the episodes are on YouTube.

I am raising my children on this show. Both daughters love them.

Compared to other great shows of the era (Honeymooners, I Love Lucy), the comic timing of the main performers (Burns, Allen, Von Zell, Benaderet, Keating) is as good as any of them, the writing is just as good. Although Lucy was superior with physical comedy and slapstick, George and Gracie had a warmth on screen that was there even when Gracie ordered enough appliances to fill the yard to save money because they were on sale.

The other shows were often sillier, but Burns and Allen explicitly never took itself too seriously, as George was playing God even then, watching his own show on TV so he was generally a step ahead of everybody, but never lorded over everybody. There was never any danger of George knocking Gracie to the moon, or even spanking her. Unlike really light fare like "Father Knows Best" or "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet", the plots were genuinely funny, and the jokes were far funnier. Gracie could deliver the ditziest lines with complete believability. Unlike many modern sitcoms, the main characters were extremely likeable.

George and Gracie had decades in show biz even by the '50s to know what worked and what didn't, and weren't shy about incorporating great vaudeville skits into the show. One of my favorites is the "Kleebob Card Game" (with a less famous "Harry")click here Some day, I'm going to come up with a complete set of rules for Kleebob based on that skit.

[I was in my mid-teens when I watched all 3 of these great shows, the most ‘adult’ of which would have to be Jack Paar, with his frequent guests, Oscar Levant, Jonathon Winters, et al. Wonderful stuff! ]

I remember an episode of American Sportsman with Curt Goudy fishing on Jonathan Winters’ boat.

He was going from one impression of a sea captain to another then various fisherman characters. We were all on the floor laughing. We were waiting for Goudy to fall overboard. The man a was a comedic genius.

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