Here's a piece of animation history. It's July 7, 2000 and June Foray is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame…
Johnny Grant, a local TV personality who was some sort of unofficial Mayor of Hollywood, is officiating at the ceremony, which was on the south side of Hollywood Boulevard about half a block east of La Brea. Among the speakers are Steve Allen and Stan Freberg. I'm somewhere in that mob behind the platform with Keith Scott, Leonard Maltin, Frank Welker, Carolyn Kelly and all sort of other interesting people.
Here — let's watch the video and then I'll tell you what I remember about that day…
People wonder how someone gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The rules are here and a lot of potential applicants and nominators are scared off by the hefty fee that comes with it. I don't recall what it was in 2000 but today, it's $55,000. Sometimes, the honoree or his/her fan club comes up with the dough but I suspect it's usually paid by some TV or movie studio that has a show or film about to open starring the honoree. Agents have been known to say, when an in-demand star is in demand for a movie, "My client wants ten million dollars plus it would be nice (i.e., mandatory) if your studio would use all its clout to get him/her a star on Hollywood Boulevard and/or his/her footprints in the courtyard of Grauman's Chinese."
In June's case, she didn't have that kind of clout but Chuck Jones apparently did. He told Warner Brothers that he wanted it to happen and, sure enough, it happened.
Odd story about how I was present for the unveiling. At the time, I had written the script for a Scooby Doo videogame and although I was not voice-directing, I was required to be present at the session when the cast came in to record my script. Unfortunately, the session was the same day and hour as the star ceremony and I had promised June I would be there for the dedication.
I asked the studio to reschedule the recording session. They said no. I asked them to allow me to not be present for it. They said no. I stopped asking when I realized that — by one of those amazing coincidences in which my life abounds — the star ceremony was in front of a big office building on Hollywood Boulevard and the recording session was at a studio in that building commencing an hour before the ceremony. So we recorded for an hour, then took a break and all went out to watch June get her star, then we went back in and finished the recording. That's why Frank Welker was there.
(That Scooby Doo videogame, by the way, was never finished or released. I'll get someone very mad at me if I post the whole story about it. Let's just say a person involved in its production who did not work for Warner Brothers did something that rightly pissed-off the studio and they killed the whole project.)
Also present at the star ceremony was Larry Harmon, the proprietor of Bozo the Clown. Larry wasn't there because of June. Larry's office happened to be in that building and I ran into him in the lobby. When I told him what was happening outside, he came out, talked his way into the V.I.P. area with us, and spent the whole time telling me and everyone how unfair it was that he hadn't gotten a star on the sidewalk despite years of lobbying. Larry never worked for Chuck Jones.
But it was overall a very happy occasion with a lot of happy people. At one point in the video, Johnny Grant spotted Chuck McCann in the crowd and give him a big introduction…which was nice but it wasn't Chuck McCann. It was just a guy who looked a lot like him. One of those Chuck McCann impersonators you hear about all the time.
That's about all I remember. Thanks to Tom Knott, who I believe was the person who shot this video, and to Kamden Spies, who I know is the person who told me it was online.