June Allyson

At 88 years old, June Allyson has this physical status:

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.

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).

Interspersing jobs in the chorus line at the Copacabana Club with acting roles at Vitaphone, the diminutive 5'1", below-100-pound Allyson landed a chorus job in the Broadway show Sing Out the News in 1938.

The “legend” around her stage name is that the choreographer gave her a job and a new name: Allyson, a family name, and June, for the month, although like many aspects of her career resume, the story is highly unlikely as she was already dubbing herself "June Allyson" prior to her Broadway engagement. At one point she attributed the name to a director she worked with even later.

Allyson subsequently appeared in the chorus in the Jerome Kern–Oscar Hammerstein II musical Very Warm for May (1939).

When Vitaphone discontinued New York production in 1940, Allyson returned to the stage to take on more chorus roles in Rodgers and Hart's Higher and Higher (1940) and Cole Porter's Panama Hattie (1940).

Her dancing and musical talent led to a stint as an understudy for the lead, Betty Hutton, and when Hutton contracted measles, Allyson appeared in five performances of Panama Hattie. Broadway director George Abbott caught one of performances and offered Allyson one of the lead roles in his production of Best Foot Forward (1941).

After her appearance in the Broadway musical, Allyson was selected for the 1943 film version of Best Foot Forward. 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 Forward's 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.

Allyson's breakthrough was in Two Girls and a Sailor (1944) where the studio image of the "girl next door" 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. It was on this film she met Dick Powell, whom she later married.

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).

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 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.

She was reunited with Johnson in High Barbaree (1947) and followed with the musical Good News, also in 1947.

Allyson starred with Johnson in the 1948 comedy The Bride Goes Wild, then played Constance in the hugely popular 1948 The Three Musketeers (1948). Her song "Thou Swell" was a high point of the Rodgers and Hart biopic Words and Music (1948), as performed in the "A Connecticut Yankee" segment with the Blackburn Twins.

Allyson played the tomboy Jo March in Little Women (1949), 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.

The same year, MGM announced Allyson would be in Forever by Mildred Crann, but the project was dropped. Instead, she starred in The Stratton Story (1949) with James Stewart, which she later said was her favorite film.

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 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. She started in Remains to Be Seen (1953) with Johnson, which was a flop. In May 1953, she and MGM agreed to part ways by mutual consent.

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 did 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.

In 1957, she signed with Universal and did two more remakes: Interlude, a drama for Douglas Sirk, and My Man Godfrey, a comedy with David Niven. She then made A Stranger in My Arms (1958) with Jeff Chandler. The box office failure of these films effectively ended her reign as an A-list movie star.

The DuPont Show with June Allyson (1959–60) ran for two seasons on CBS and was an attempt to use a high budget formula. She later called it "the hardest thing I ever did." 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 and Burke's Law before retiring for several years after the death of Powell in 1963.

Allyson returned to acting with an appearance in The Name of the Game. In 1970, she briefly starred in Forty Carats on Broadway.

Throughout the 1970s, she appeared regularly on television shows such as See the Man Run (1971), The Sixth Sense (1972), and Letters from Three Lovers (1973), as well as in the film They Only Kill Their Masters (1972).

Later appearances include Curse of the Black Widow (1977), Three on a Date (1978), Vega$ (1978), Blackout (1978), House Calls, The Kid with the Broken Halo (1982) Simon & Simon, The Love Boat, Hart to Hart, Murder, She Wrote, Misfits of Science, Crazy Like a Fox, and Airwolf. Her last appearance was in These Old Broads (2001).

Allyson made a special appearance in 1994 in That's Entertainment III, as one of the film's narrators. She spoke about MGM's golden era and introduced vintage film clips.

Until 2003, Allyson remained busy touring the country making personal appearances, headlining celebrity cruises, and speaking on behalf of Kimberly-Clark, a long-time commercial interest.

Allyson became the spokesperson for Depend, a diaper line for adults with incontinence, in 1984. 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. As the first celebrity to undertake the role of public spokesperson for promoting the use of the Depend undergarment, Allyson did "more than any other public figure to encourage and persuade people with incontinence to lead fuller and more active lives".

Source

• 1951: won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Actress-Musical/Comedy, for Too Young to Kiss.
• 1954: awarded the Special Jury Prize for Ensemble Acting at the Venice Festival, for Executive Suite, in the same year that she was voted Most Popular Female Star by Photoplay magazine.
• 1955: named the ninth most popular movie star in the annual Quigley Exhibitors Poll and the second most popular female star, after Grace Kelly.
• 1960: received a motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1537 Vine Street for her contributions to the film industry.
• 1985: received the Cannes Festival Distinguished Service Award.
• 2007: received a special tribute during the Academy Awards as part of the annual memorial tribute.