June Foray, 1917-2017

You probably wouldn't recognize the face, but you'd recognize the voice: voice actress June Foray has died two months shy of her 100th birthday. Foray provided the voices for a bunch of well-known characters, with the most famous of them being Rocket J. Squirrel from the various Bullwinkle shows; she also provided the voice of Natasha Fatale, partner of Boris Badunov. There's also Cindy Lou Who, the little girl in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, opposite Boris Karloff's Grinch.

As for her connection to the movies, Foray also provided the voice for Granny, Tweety's owner in the Looney Tunes' Sylvester/Tweety cartoons, something she was doing already in her 30s. (Actually, Foray didn't create the voice; she took over for Bea Benederet.) Foray was also a vocal advocate for animation as a medium, and partially responsible for getting the Oscars to include a category for Best Animated Feature.

It's a shame that TCM doesn't have the rights to any of the animation for Warner Bros. or MGM so they could show some of the shorts in her honor. I don't know if Cartoon Network shows any old cartoons any longer.