Mushroom Soup Saturday

mushroomsoup177

Looks like I'm not going to have time today to post more than this. Hey, don't look at me like that. I posted plenty of content last week.

A couple of folks online are disputing my claim that Stan Freberg had the longest career of anyone who ever did cartoon voices. They say June Foray has been doing it longer. That would be true if you believe the earliest credits for June that are listed in the Internet Movie Database but I do not and at least when I co-authored her autobiography, June didn't either. Both Stan and June did their last cartoon voice work last year — in 2014. Stan, we know, did his first in 1945 for cartoons that were released in 1946.

There is some dispute over what June's first cartoon was. Her first inarguable credit was in Cinderella, which was released in 1950. I don't know when she recorded her part but it probably wasn't before 1948. There are three or four earlier cartoons in which people think they've heard her but I don't think any of them are her. To get a second opinion, I played some of them for her and she said, "That's not me."

Of course, June is still with us so it's not impossible she could do further work that would best Freberg's record. If she doesn't, it might be a long time before anyone else could. I can't think of a single other person currently doing cartoon voices who did them in the forties or fifties. There are a few from the mid-sixties. Perhaps around the year 2036, one of them will match Stan's longevity.

I'll be back tomorrow.