Trivia: The son of a construction superintendent for the Sante Fe railway stations, William Hanna was obliged to move around quite a bit as a youngster. Influenced by the preponderance of professional writers on his mother's side of the family, Hanna gravitated towards the creative arts in high school. He played saxophone in a dance band, then majored in journalism and engineering at Compton (California) Junior College. While looking for work in the early stages of the Depression, he landed a backstage engineering job at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre. Hanna's brother-in-law, who worked for a Hollywood lab called Pacific Title, tipped him off to a job opening at the Harman-Ising cartoon studios. From 1931 onward, Hanna contributed story ideas to Harman-Ising's Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series, produced on behalf of Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros. He also wrote the music and lyrics for several of the catchy tunes heard in these animated endeavors. When Harman-Ising moved to MGM, they took Hanna along as a story editor. And when MGM formed its own animation department in 1937, Hanna was hired by department head Fred Quimby. It was while under the MGM banner that Hanna formed a copacetic (and, as it turned out, lifelong) partnership with cartoon director Joseph Barbera. While both men did a little bit of everything in their cartoon collaborations, Hanna regarded himself as the director and story man, while Barbera preferred to work out the various gags. Hanna-Barbera's most lasting contribution to the MGM operation was their "Tom and Jerry" series, which earned seven Academy Awards over a 20-year period. In 1957, MGM disbanded its cartoon unit, whereupon Hanna and Barbera formed their own company for the purposes of turning out TV animation. No one who has been born after 1950 needs to be reminded of the vast Hanna-Barbera TV output: Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Jonny Quest, The Banana Splits and Scooby-Doo constitute but the tip of the iceberg. Busy as they were with their TV commitments, Hanna-Barbera occasionally found time to return to theatrical-feature work, including A Man Called Flintstone (1966), Charlotte's Web (1972) and Heidi's Song (1982). Even after selling their studio, both Hanna and Barbera remained active in the cartoon field; as recently as 1993, Hanna served as co-producer for the animated feature Once Upon a Forest. Though he's received a multitude of industry honors, it is said William Hanna is proudest of his 1985 "Distinguished Eagle Scout" award from the Boys Scouts of America, an organization with which he'd been associated since 1919.

Trivia: While few filmgoers or TV fans have ever seen June Foray, a healthy majority of them are quite familiar with her work. June Foray was one of the leading voice artists of the golden age of animation, working with both the Warner Bros. animation department and the Disney studios, and later gained her greatest fame as the voice of Rocket J. Squirrel on the classic television cartoon series The Bullwinkle Show. Born in Springfield, MA, on September 18, 1917, Foray began her career as an actress at the age of 12 -- appropriately enough, by appearing in a radio drama at a local station in Springfield directed by her voice teacher. By the time Foray was 15, she was a regular at Springfield's WBZA, and two years later she was living in Los Angeles, hoping to break into the big time as an actress. At 19, Foray was both writing and starring in a radio series for children, as Miss Makebelieve, and soon became a frequent guest performer on a number of top-rated radio shows, working with the likes of Danny Thomas and Jimmy Durante. It was in the mid-'40s that Foray finally broke into the movies, but while she scored occasional onscreen roles (most notably as High Priestess Marku in the exotic drama Sabaka), she soon discovered there was a ready market for her vocal talents in Hollywood. Her first animation voice work was for Paramount's Speaking of Animals comedy shorts, in which animated mouths were superimposed on live-action footage of animals. The Speaking of Animals shorts spawned a series of records for children, recorded with a number of other noted voice actors, including Daws Butler and Stan Freeberg. The records made her a hot property with casting agents for cartoon voice work, and she found herself working for many of the biggest names in animation. For Chuck Jones at Warner Bros., Foray provided the voice of Granny in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons, as well as the cackling Witch Hazel and dozens of other female characters. She recorded voices for several Tex Avery cartoons at MGM, as well as some Woody the Woodpecker shorts for Walter Lantz. And she made her debut at Disney as Lucifer the Cat in Cinderella. With the rise of television in the 1950s, a new market for cartoons appeared, and Foray's career kicked into high gear. She was cast as Rocky on The Bullwinkle Show, and also voiced a number of female characters on the series (most notably the villainous Natasha); she was also the voice of sweet-natured Nell Fenwick on the show's side series Dudley Do-Right. Foray stayed busy doing voice work on a number of other cartoon series as well, including Hoppity Hooper, Yogi the Bear, George of the Jungle, and the new Tom and Jerry shorts produced for TV in 1965. In addition, Foray did occasional work on The Flintstones, though she was passed over for the role of Betty Rubble after voicing her in the show's pilot. (Foray also appeared, uncredited, as the voice of Cindy Lou Who in Chuck Jones' classic animated version of How The Grinch Stole Christmas). In the 1980s and 1990s, at an age when most actresses would consider retirement, Foray was still one of Hollywood's busiest vocal talents, recording voices for everything from The Smurfs and Garfield to Duck Tales and The Simpsons. Foray also made a return to prestigious big-screen animation as the voice of Grandmother Fa in Mulan, and revisited her most famous role with vocal work in 2000's mixture of live-action and computer animation, The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle. In semi-retirement (though she still takes the occasional job that strikes her fancy), Foray is an active member of the International Animated Film Society, as well as the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Trivia: Janet Waldo was a star of radio in the mid-1940s (at age 23) in the role of Corliss Archer, a typical American teenager. Twenty years later, Waldo became identified for another generation (or two) as the voice of the quintessential teenage girl Judy Jetson on the prime-time cartoon show The Jetsons. Born in Yakima, WA, in 1918, Waldo had a love of theater and acting from an early age, and while growing up, she participated in plays put on by her church. Her family had an artistic bent on both sides: her mother was a singer trained at the Boston Conservatory while her father, a railroad executive, was a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her sister Elizabeth was later a violin virtuoso who also appeared in movies. Waldo attended the University of Washington, where she engaged in student theatricals and won a special award in her freshman year. A distinguished alumnus -- Bing Crosby -- was visiting at the time, and they met when he presented her with the award. With him was a Paramount talent scout, ever on the lookout for new additions to the studio's stable of actors, who got Waldo signed up for a screen test and a role in the Crosby comedy The Star Maker. She was soon a bit player at the studio, but still waiting for her big break. That break ended up coming from radio rather than movies, however, on the Cecil B. DeMille-produced Radio Theatre, working with Merle Oberon and George Brent. Waldo's voice and range as an actress seemed to blossom when heard over the airwaves, and by 1943, at age 23, Waldo was starring or co-starring in Meet Corliss Archer, One Man's Family, The Gallant Heart, and Star Playhouse, as well as playing the cigarette girl on both The Red Skelton Show and People Are Funny; she also played roles on the Edward G. Robinson series The Big Town. Over the ensuing final great decade of radio, she worked on Dr. Christian, Silver Theater, Ozzie & Harriet, and Railroad Hour, although she never took as many roles as she might have. Waldo married writer/director/producer Robert E. Lee, who later achieved renown in the theater as the co-author, with Jerome Lawrence, of Inherit the Wind, First Monday in October, and Auntie Mame. The couple soon had a family to raise, and she turned down a great number of roles after that, even declining the offer to play Corliss Archer when the series jumped to television at the start of the 1950s. Waldo continued working in radio and subsequently did voice-over work in addition to returning to the theater. In the early '60s, as an established voice artist, she was chosen to portray the role of Judy Jetson in the prime-time cartoon series The Jetsons, produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Waldo took on the role, and has been known to a generation of baby boomer cartoon fans as Judy Jetson ever since, even returning to the role for later episodes of the series shot in the ensuing decades. She also made headlines in 1989, when, in a decision made by Universal Pictures and William Hanna, her voice was wiped from the audio track of Jetsons: The Movie so that she could be replaced by the singer Tiffany. Waldo got in the last word, however, in 2004, when, at age 83, she provided commentary for two episodes on The Jetsons: The Complete First Season DVD set from Warner Home Video. Waldo died in 2016, at age 96.

Trivia: African-American actress Lillian Randolph is best remembered for starring in the radio series "Beulah." On radio, she also worked in "Amos 'n' Andy" and "The Great Gildersleeve." In film, Randolph played character roles in many films including those in the Great Gildersleeve series of the '40s.

Trivia: Former radio actress Martha Wentworth played the Duchess, Allan Lane's robust-looking aunt, in seven of Republic Pictures' popular Red Ryder Westerns from 1946-1947. The original Duchess, Alice Fleming, had left the series along with William Elliott, who was being groomed for Grade-A Westerns. As the new Duchess, Wentworth joined Lane, Elliott's replacement, and little Bobby Blake (later Robert Blake), the former Our Gang star, who played Indian sidekick Little Beaver in all the Republic Red Ryder films. For a great majority of the series' fans, the Lane-Wentworth-Blake combination turned out the quintessential Red Ryder films, the trio becoming one of the most successful combinations in B-Western history. Republic sold the Red Ryder franchise to low-budget Eagle-Lion in 1948 and four additional films were produced, but Wentworth was replaced with former silent-action heroine Marin Sais. In her later years, Wentworth did quite a bit of voice-over work for Walt Disney.

Trivia: American entertainer Mel Blanc, who would make his name and fortune by way of his muscular vocal chords, started out in the comparatively non-verbal world of band music. He entered radio in 1927, and within six years was costarring with his wife on a largely adlibbed weekly program emanating from Portland, Oregon, titled Cobwebs and Nuts. Denied a huge budget, Blanc was compelled to provide most of the character voices himself, and in so doing cultivated the skills that would bring him fame. He made the Los Angeles radio rounds in the mid-1930s, then was hired to provide the voice for a drunken bull in the 1937 Warner Bros. "Looney Tune" Picador Porky. Taking over the voice of Porky ("Th-th-th-that's all, Folks") Pig from a genuine stammerer who knew nothing about comic timing, Blanc became a valuable member of the "Termite Terrace" cartoon staff. Before long, he created the voice of Daffy Duck, whose lisping cadence was inspired by Warner Bros. cartoon boss Leon Schlesinger. In 1940, Blanc introduced his most enduring Warners voice -- the insouciant, carrot-chopping Bugs Bunny (ironically, Blanc was allergic to carrots). He freelanced with the MGM and Walter Lantz animation firms (creating the laugh for Woody Woodpecker at the latter studio) before signing exclusively with Warners in the early 1940s. Reasoning that his limitless character repetoire -- including Sylvester, Foghorn Leghorn, Speedy Gonzales, Tweety Pie, Pepe Le Pew, Yosemite Sam and so many others -- had made him a valuable commodity to the studio, Blanc asked for a raise. Denied this, he demanded and got screen credit -- a rarity for a cartoon voice artist of the 1940s. Though his salary at Warners never went above $20,000 per year, Blanc was very well compensated for his prolific work on radio. He was a regular on such series as The Abbott and Costello Show and The Burns and Allen Show, and in 1946 headlined his own weekly radio sitcom. For nearly three decades, Blanc was closely associated with the radio and TV output of comedian Jack Benny, essaying such roles as the "Si-Sy-Si" Mexican, harried violin teacher Professor LeBlanc, Polly the parrot, and the sputtering Maxwell automobile. While his voice was heard in dozens of live-action films, Blanc appeared on screen in only two pictures: Neptune's Daughter (1949) and Kiss Me Stupid (1964). Extremely busy in the world of made-for-TV cartoons during the 1950s and 1960s, Blanc added such new characterizations to his resume as Barney Rubble on The Flintstones (1960-66) and Cosmo Spacely on The Jetsons (1962). In early 1961, Blanc was seriously injured in an auto accident. For weeks, the doctor was unable to communicate with the comatose Blanc until, in desperation, he addressed the actor with "How are you today, Bugs Bunny?" "Eh...just fine, Doc," Blanc replied weakly in his Bugs voice. At that miraculous moment, Blanc made the first step towards his eventual full recovery (this story sounds apocryphical, and even Blanc himself can't confirm that it took place, but those who witnessed the event swear that it really happened). In the 1970s, Blanc and his actor/producer son Noel -- whom Mel was grooming to take over the roles of Bugs, Daffy and the rest -- ran their own school for voice actors. Mel Blanc continued performing right up to his death in July of 1989; earlier that same year, he published his autobiography, That's Not All, Folks.

Trivia: Best known for his satirical recorded send-ups of everything from popular songs to American history and as the father of funny television commercials, Stan Freberg is truly one of comedy's great geniuses. Born in Pasadena, CA, Freberg felt the performing bug's bite early on. He launched his professional career in 1943 performing vocal impressions on Cliffie Stone's radio program. In the mid-'40s, Freberg made a name for himself as a voice artist for such major animation studios as Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, and Walter Lantz; he and fellow voice artist Daws Butler were both regulars on the Time for Beany show. During the '50s, Freberg began making his famous song parodies of such hits as "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "The Great Pretender," and "Banana Boat (Day-O)." These and others not only made fun of the tunes, they also skewered pop culture and history, as in his famous "Dragon-Net" send-up of Jack Webb's long-running television show. As an actor, Freberg has only appeared in a couple of feature films making his debut in Callaway Went Thataway (1951). He has also done work on Broadway and continues to occasionally make appearances on television shows such as Roseanne. In 1997, he became a regular on the CBS children's program The Weird Al Show. As a member of the advertising world, Freberg made many inroads toward making commercials genuinely entertaining. His television campaign for Sunsweet Prunes -- "Today the pits; tomorrow the wrinkles" -- is still considered one of the best of the 1970s. In 1988, Freberg published his autobiography, It Only Hurts When I Laugh.