| June Allyson  AKA Ella Geisman
Born: 7-Oct-1917
Birthplace: Bronx, NY
Died: 8-Jul-2006
Location of death: Ojai, CA
Cause of death: Respiratory failure
Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Actor Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Two Girls and a Sailor After her parents divorced when she was a toddler, June Allyson was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother. She rarely saw her father after the divorce. At the age of nine, she was injured when lightning struck a tree. A heavy branch fell, crushing and killing a friend, and maiming Allyson's legs. Despite her doctors' pessimism, she stubbornly regained her ability to walk, and, enthralled by Hollywood musicals, she taught herself to dance. Her awkward gait eventually faded to a slight limp, and finally disappeared.
As a teenager, Allyson paid to see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in The Gay Divorcee, 18 times. When she was 20 and had still only danced for fun, she went to her first professional audition on a dare. She was unsure what to expect, and after dancing she was sure she had performed poorly, but by the time she got home the producers had already given her a call-back. Allyson made her professional debut in the Broadway chorusline of Sing Out the News, which starred a very young Will Geer.
She continued appearing on Broadway, but in small roles. In her fourth play, Cole Porter's Panama Hattie with Ethel Merman, Allyson understudied Betty Hutton, and earned good reviews when Hutton missed five performances and Allyson stepped in. She had a bigger role in her next play, Best Foot Forward, with Stanley Donen, choreographed by Gene Kelly. The play was a hit, and MGM bought the rights, and brought Allyson to Hollywood. It was filmed with Lucille Ball in the lead, and Allyson and Gloria DeHaven in key supporting roles. Due to a clerical error, their credits were reversed when listed in the film, and for years fans and even agents often confused one actress for the other.
Allyson's best films include the 1948 The Three Musketeers with Gene Kelly as D'Artagnan, Executive Suite, The Glenn Miller Story and The [Monte] Stratton Story. She was tough yet graceful as the tomboy Jo in the 1949 film of Little Women, and she sang and danced in Two Sisters from Boston, The Opposite Sex, and Two Girls and a Sailor. Allyson was the #1 female movie star for six straight years, as voted by theater owners.
She married actor Dick Powell, 13 years older than she was, before such marriages became common. Their boss, MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer, tried to talk them out of it, but relented when the fatherless Allyson batted her eyes and asked him to give her away. They remained married until Powell's death in 1963. The couple co-starred in a few forgettable films, and he directed her in You Can't Run Away from It, an amusing remake of It Happened One Night, with Allyson in Claudette Colbert's role and Jack Lemmon as Clark Gable. Powell also produced Allyson's 1959-61 anthology TV series, and they had two children and a seemingly happy marriage.
When Powell died, Allyson quickly remarried and almost as quickly divorced. In a scandal that threatened to end Allyson's career, her mother sued for custody of her children, alleging that she was an unfit mother. She dropped out of moviemaking, and mother and daughter settled their lawsuit when Allyson's new boyfriend was named as the children's co-guardian. The boyfriend was Dirk Summers, later a writer for Emergency, and director of the ecological documentary Survival of Spaceship Earth. They lived together for 14 years, until 1975, but never married.
Allyson returned to acting with limited success in the early 1970s, and continued guest starring on TV through the mid-1980s. In 1976, she married a dentist who fancied himself an actor, and they toured together in plays. In 1984 she became spokesperson for Depends adult diapers.
Father: Robert Geisman (janitor)
Mother: Clara Geisman (print shop worker)
Brother: Henry Geisman
Father: Arthur Peters (stepfather, married Clara Geisman)
Boyfriend: Tommy Mitchell (radio singer)
Husband: Dick Powell (actor, m. 19-Aug-1945, d. 2-Jan-1963, four children)
Son: Richard Powell, Jr. (film industry)
Daughter: Pamela Allyson Powell (adopted)
Husband: Alfred Glenn Maxwell (m. 1963, div. 1963)
Boyfriend: Dirk Summers (cohabited 1963-75)
Husband: David Ashrow (dentist, m. 1976, until her death)
High School: Theodore Roosevelt High School, Bronx, NY (1935)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Hollywood Walk of Fame
Dutch Ancestry
Risk Factors: Smoking
FILMOGRAPHY AS ACTOR
That's Entertainment! III (16-Jun-1994) Herself
The Kid with the Broken Halo (5-Apr-1982)
Blackout (28-Jun-1978)
They Only Kill Their Masters (22-Nov-1972)
My Man Godfrey (11-Oct-1957)
Interlude (1957)
The Opposite Sex (26-Oct-1956)
The McConnell Story (29-Sep-1955)
Strategic Air Command (25-Mar-1955)
Woman's World (28-Sep-1954)
Executive Suite (6-May-1954)
The Glenn Miller Story (10-Dec-1953)
Remains to be Seen (15-May-1953)
Battle Circus (6-Mar-1953)
Right Cross (15-Nov-1950)
The Stratton Story (12-May-1949)
Little Women (10-Mar-1949)
Words and Music (9-Dec-1948) Herself
The Three Musketeers (20-Oct-1948)
The Bride Goes Wild (3-Mar-1948)
Good News (26-Dec-1947)
High Barbaree (May-1947)
Till the Clouds Roll By (5-Dec-1946)
Two Sisters from Boston (Apr-1946)
Her Highness and the Bellboy (11-Jul-1945)
Two Girls and a Sailor (27-Apr-1944)
Meet the People (21-Apr-1944)
Girl Crazy (26-Nov-1943)
Thousands Cheer (13-Sep-1943) Herself
Best Foot Forward (29-Jun-1943)
Official Website:
http://www.juneallyson.com/
Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript.
Do you know something we don't?
Submit a correction or make a comment about this profile
Copyright ©2008 Soylent Communications
|
