June Allyson (born Eleanor Geisman; October 7, 1917 – July 8, 2006) was an American stage, film, and television actress.
Allyson began her career in 1937 as a dancer in short subject films and on Broadway in 1938. She signed with MGM in 1943 and rose to fame the following year in Two Girls and a Sailor. Allyson's "girl next door" image was solidified during the mid-1940s when she was paired with actor Van Johnson in six films. In 1951 she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss. From 1959 to 1961 she hosted and occasionally starred in her own anthology series, The DuPont Show with June Allyson, which aired on CBS. in a successful marketing campaign that has been credited in reducing the social stigma of incontinence. She made her final onscreen appearance in 2001.
Allyson was married four times (to three husbands) and had two children with her first husband, Dick Powell. She died of respiratory failure and bronchitis in July 2006 at the age of 88.
Early life
Allyson was born Eleanor Geisman, nicknamed Ella, in The Bronx, New York City. Studio biographies listed her as Jan Allyson born to Franco-English parents. Upon June's death, her daughter said Allyson was born "Eleanor Geisman to a French mother and Dutch father." In an interview with Larry King Allyson denied being of German Jewish descent.
In April 1918 (when Allyson was six months old), her alcoholic father, who had worked as a janitor, abandoned the family. Allyson was brought up in near poverty, living with her maternal grandparents. To make ends meet, her mother worked as a telephone operator and restaurant cashier. When she had enough funds, she occasionally reunited with her daughter, but more often Allyson was "farmed" to her grandparents or other relatives. Allyson sustained a fractured skull and broken back, and her dog was killed. Her doctors said she never would walk again and confined her to a heavy steel brace from neck to hips for four years. She ultimately regained her health, but when Allyson had become famous, she was terrified that people would discover her background from the "tenement side of New York City", and she readily agreed to studio tales of a "rosy life", including a concocted story that she underwent months of swimming exercises in rehabilitation to emerge as a star swimmer.
After gradually progressing from a wheelchair to crutches to braces, Allyson's true escape from her impoverished life was to go to the cinema, where she was enraptured by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies. She also tried to emulate the singing styles of movie stars, but she never mastered reading music.
When her mother remarried and the family was reunited with a more stable financial standing, Allyson was enrolled in the Ned Wayburn Dancing Academy and began to enter dance competitions with the stage name of Elaine Peters.
Career
Early work
With the death of her stepfather and a bleak future ahead, she left high school midway through her junior year to seek jobs as a dancer. Her first $60-a-week job was as a tap dancer at the Lido Club in Montreal. Returning to New York City, she found work as an actress in movie short subjects filmed by Educational Pictures at its Astoria, Queens NY studio.
Fiercely ambitious, Allyson tried her hand at modeling but to her consternation became the "sad-looking before part" in a before-and-after bathing suit magazine ad.
Musical shorts
Her first career break came when Educational cast her as an ingenue opposite singer Lee Sullivan, comic dancers Herman Timberg, Jr. and Pat Rooney, Jr., and future comedy star Danny Kaye in a series of shorts. These included Swing for Sale (1937), Pixilated (1937), Ups and Downs (1937), Dime a Dance (1938), Dates and Nuts (1938), and Sing for Sweetie (1938).
When Educational ceased operations, Allyson moved to Vitaphone in Brooklyn and starred or co-starred (with dancer Hal Le Roy) in musical shorts. These included The Prisoner of Swing (1938), The Knight Is Young (1938), Rollin' in Rhythm (1939), and All Girl Revue (1940).
Broadway
Interspersing jobs in the chorus line at the Copacabana Club with acting roles at Vitaphone, the diminutive 5'1", below 100-lb Allyson landed a chorus job in the Broadway show Sing Out the News in 1938. When she arrived in Hollywood, the production had not started, so MGM "placed her on the payroll" of Girl Crazy (1943). Despite playing a bit part, Allyson received good reviews as a sidekick to Best Foot Forwards star, Lucille Ball, but was still relegated to the "drop list."
MGM's musical supervisor Arthur Freed saw her screen test sent up by an agent and insisted that Allyson be put on contract immediately. Another musical, Thousands Cheer (1943), was a showcase for her singing, albeit still in a minor role.
As a new starlet, although Allyson had already been a performer on stage and screen for over five years, she was presented as an "overnight sensation", with Hollywood press agents attempting to portray her as an ingenue, selectively slicing years off her true age. Studio bios listed her variously as being born in 1922 and 1923. was fostered by her being cast alongside long-time acting chum Van Johnson, the quintessential "boy next door." As the "sweetheart team", Johnson and Allyson were to appear together in four later films.
Allyson supported Lucille Ball again in Meet the People (1944), which was a flop.
She supported Margaret O'Brien in Music for Millions (1944) and was billed after Robert Walker and Hedy Lamarr in the romantic comedy Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945).
Stardom
thumb|left|Allyson, March 1945
Allyson was top-billed along with Walker in The Sailor Takes a Wife (1945). She had a role in Two Sisters from Boston (1946) with Kathryn Grayson and Peter Lawford, and she was one of several MGM stars in Till the Clouds Roll By (1946). She also appeared in her first drama, The Secret Heart, in 1946 with Claudette Colbert and Walter Pidgeon. which was a huge hit. She was adept at crying on cue, and many of her films incorporated a crying scene. Fellow MGM player Margaret O'Brien recalled that she and Allyson were known as "the town criers". "I cried once in a picture and they said 'Let's do it again', and I cried for the rest of my career", she later said.
She made two films with Dick Powell: The Reformer and the Redhead (1950) and Right Cross (1950), after which she was reunited with Johnson in Too Young to Kiss (1951).
In 1950 Allyson had been signed to appear opposite her childhood idol Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding but had to leave the production due to pregnancy. She was replaced initially by Judy Garland, who in turn was replaced by Jane Powell.
Allyson played a doctor in The Girl in White (1952), which lost revenue, and a nurse in Battle Circus (1953), a hit.
Post MGM
In 1954 Allyson was in a huge Universal Pictures hit, The Glenn Miller Story, as well as another successful MGM film, Executive Suite. She also starred the Fox Film Woman's World, which was less successful.
Allyson was teamed with Stewart again in Strategic Air Command (1955) at Paramount, another success.
She had a change of pace in The Shrike (1955) with José Ferrer at Universal; it flopped. More popular was The McConnell Story (1955) with Alan Ladd at Warner Bros.
In 1956 Allyson starred in some musical remakes of classic films: The Opposite Sex, a remake of The Women at MGM, and You Can't Run Away from It, a remake of It Happened One Night at Columbia, which was directed by Powell. Her efforts were dismissed by an entertainment critic in the LA Examiner as "reaching down to the level of mag fiction." However, TV Guide and other fan magazines such as TV Magazine considered Allyson's foray into television as revitalizing her fame and career for a younger audience and remarked that her typecasting by the movie industry as the "girl next door" was a "waste and neglect of talent on its own doorstep."
She also appeared on shows like Zane Grey Theater, The Dick Powell Theatre, The Judy Garland Show, and Burke's Law before retiring for several years after the death of Powell in 1963. The American Urogynecologic Society established the June Allyson Foundation in 1998, made possible by a grant from Kimberly-Clark. The foundation raises money for incontinence education and research. Although dating David Rose, Peter Lawford, and John F. Kennedy, Allyson was actually being courted by Dick Powell.
On August 19, 1945, Allyson caused MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer some consternation by marrying Dick Powell. After defying him twice by refusing to stop seeing Powell, in a "tactical master stroke", she asked Mayer to give her away at the wedding. He was so disarmed that he agreed but put Allyson on suspension anyway.
The Powells had two children, Pamela Allyson Powell (adopted in 1948 through the Tennessee Children's Home Society in an adoption arranged by Georgia Tann) and Richard Powell, Jr., born December 24, 1950.
In the mid 1950s, Allyson reportedly had an affair with actor Alan Ladd.
In 1961, Allyson underwent a kidney operation and later, throat surgery, temporarily affecting her trademark raspy voice. She filed for divorce that year, the reason being Powell's devotion to work. In February 1961, Allyson was awarded $2.5 million in settlement, along with custody of their children, in an interlocutory divorce decree. However, before the divorce was final, they reconciled and remained married until his death on January 2, 1963. Later, Allyson reflected on how Powell's death affected her: