Girl-next-door June Allyson, 88
Posted: Monday, July 10th, 2006 3:34 pm
June Allyson, the sunny, raspy-voiced “perfect wife” of James Stewart, Van Johnson and other movie heroes, has died, her daughter Pamela Allyson Powell said Monday. She was 88. …
During World War II, American GIs pinned up photos of Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable, but June Allyson was the girl they wanted to come home to. Petite, blonde and alive with fresh-faced optimism, she seemed the ideal sweetheart and wife, supporting and unthreatening. …
With typical wonderment, Allyson expressed surprise in a 1986 interview that she had ever become a movie star:
“I have big teeth. I lisp. My eyes disappear when I smile. My voice is funny. I don’t sing like Judy Garland. I don’t dance like Cyd Charisse. But women identify with me. And while men desire Cyd Charisse, they’d take me home to meet Mom.”
Allyson’s real life belied the sunshiny image she presented in films of the ’40s and ’50s. As she revealed in her 1982 autobiography, she had an alcoholic father and was raised by a single mother in the Bronx in New York. Her “ideal marriage” to actor-director Dick Powell was beset with frustrations. … Read full obituary
