June Foray, a voice actress who portrayed croaky grandmothers, purring cats and the world’s most famous flying rodent — Rocket J. Squirrel, from “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show” — in hundreds of animated movies, television series and commercials, died July 26 at a Los Angeles hospital. She was 99.
Her niece, Robin Thaler, said the cause was cardiac arrest.
Few actors — or everyday, performance-averse human beings, for that matter — maintained as much control over their voice as Ms. Foray, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2010 and an honorary Emmy Award three years later.
She portrayed elderly women even as a child, going on the radio at 12 with the help of an acting teacher. In 2014, as a very senior citizen, she played the Looney Tunes role of Granny, owner of Sylvester the Cat and Tweety Bird, with the same good-
natured screeches and yawlps she used for the character a half- century earlier.
Ms. Foray sometimes drew comparisons to the actor Lon Chaney, known as the silent film era’s “man of a thousand faces” because of his ability to inhabit many roles. She was also placed in a virtuosic league of her Looney Tunes colleague Mel Blanc, who gave voice to Bugs Bunny — whom Ms. Foray pursued as the sinister Witch Hazel — and Daffy Duck and a host of other characters..
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