Remembering the Smurfy voice of Lucille Bliss

Seattle's NPR station, KUOW, paid tribute to Lucille Bliss today. Bliss was the familiar, scratchy, smiling voice of Smurfette and many other cartoon characters in movies and TV Shows ranging from Cinderella to Invader ZIM. She passed away November 8th.

As it turns out, Bliss was one of the first voice actors to make an impression on me. As a child, I played her Peter Rabbit record over-and-over again. It was released by Walt Disney, and featured this story of Bambi's rabbit pal, Thumper.



Take a listen to Katy Sewall's retrospective of Miss Bliss on KUOW's "Weekday" program with Steve Scher. The discussion begins 38 minutes into the podcast. You can skip to it really fast (I promise), and you'll gain a new appreciation for a talent that survived the decline of old time radio and the ever-changing trends of TV animation.

Smurf Justice Hits the Airwaves!

Yesterday I spoke to Seattle’s KOMO 1000 News about Bob Bergen’s “Smurf Justice for June Foray” campaign on Facebook. Here’s the story as it aired in drive-time yesterday afternoon…



Since the story is somewhat ‘evergreen,’ they tell me that it will probably be repeated over the 4th of July weekend. This is good news! That’s 3 or 4 days of on-air exposure for the campaign. Hopefully we’ll get a little traction and see the numbers go up on the ‘Smurf Justice’ Facebook page.
If you’d like to help us grow those numbers, here are a few suggestions:

• share and re-share the Facebook page with your friends
• post a fun June Foray trivia fact or video and link to the Facebook page
• use your other social media sites, like Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace. Again, including some interesting content so that you are not just spamming people.
• E-mail the story to your friends and family who may not be using social media. You are welcome to forward this page. Animation Magazine also did a nice piece which you can view here.
• Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper

It's important to note that this isn't a protest of anything or anyone. We just think it would be cool for June-and for Smurf fans-if the filmmakers included the voice of the original Jokey Smurf in some capacity.

Thanks in advance for your help. Have a Smurf-tastic day!

-Dan

Smurf Justice for June Foray!

If you grew up watching cartoons, you grew up listening to June Foray. When I was a kid, I would get up at o’dark-thirty each weekday morning to watch Rocky & Bullwinkle before school. For the uninitiated, June was both Rocky the Flying Squirrel and femme fatale Natasha.



June was also