June Haver

Last month a movie fan and reader of this blog requested a posting on actress-singer-dancer June Haver.  I perhaps should have found a way to include her in our salute to the 1940's (her most prominent movie decade) but on the other hand she did make four films in the 1950's (the decade we're currently featuring) so let's have a go at it.

There seems to be no question that she was a precocious child and also a very talented and pretty one.  She was born in 1926 in Rock Island, Illinois, to a father who had once been a musician and a mother who was an actress of little note.  That note, however, had been enlarged when she became a rather typical stage mother.  Of her three daughters, her middle one was the prettiest and the most talented and Mama had a singleness of purpose that would not go unrealized.

When she was a mere six, little Junie made her stage debut in a Cincinnati little theater production.  Around that same time she was proficient enough on the piano to snag a solo with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.  At eight the youngster had a Hollywood screen test but Mama nixed it because she wanted her little darling to have some semblance of a normal childhood.  Nonetheless, she was enrolled in not one but two drama schools.  Before long she was appearing in a Rock Island radio show singing solos.

By the time she was 13 and those vocal pipes were better than ever, she sang with any band that might be passing through town.  She debuted with the Dick Jurgens Orchestra (the same band my mother sang with when he passed through Peoria, some 100 miles south of Rock Island) and also Freddie Martin and Ted Fio Rito's bands.  

Around this time the Havers moved to Los Angeles.  June was enrolled in Beverly Hills High where she performed in every school play she could.   A talent agent from 20th Century Fox spotted her in a production which resulted in her getting a contract.  She didn't work for a while but finally she and another newcomer, Jeanne Crain, where given tiny roles in an Alice Faye-Carmen Miranda musical, The Gang's All Here (1943).  Blink and you'd miss them both.

The following year Haver and Crain were signed to star alongside Walter Brennan and new heartthrob, Lon McCallister, in Home in Indiana (1944), a wholesome nod to the horsey set.  Crain played the sweet one and Haver the racy one, both vying for McCallister's attentions.

Studio head Darryl F. Zanuck had been in the service when Haver was hired and when he returned and got a good look at her, he immediately determined that she would be a backup to the studio's reigning star, Betty Grable... in other words an insurance policy in case Grable lost her standing, copped an attitude or took a hike.  Unfortunately for Haver, Grable's career lasted longer.

As a result, all the big projects were offered to Grable first and if she declined, which she rarely did, then they were offered to Haver.  She was mainly saddled with B leading men and often more than once.  Brennan and McCallister worked with Haver twice as did Mark Stevens, William Lundigan and Dennis Day.  She did manage two films each with two more prominent singing stars, John Payne and Gordon MacRae.  One could also say that most of her films were rather lackluster-- not too difficult to see why Grable turned them down-- silly period songfests, fictionalized biographies and slight story lines that were indistinguishable from one another (Grable suffered the same fate).

So what were the differences between Haver and Grable?  Why was one so much more popular than the other?  Grable occasionally snagged films that were far better than some of her other work while Haver just kept plugging along in relative mediocrity.  I thought Haver was a better singer than Grable and Grable was a better dancer than Haver and neither was a particularly outstanding actress.  Along with this is the fact that Grable had a sense of humor about it all and Haver did not.  Grable was loved by pretty much everyone and Haver was not.  She was often disagreeable and I suspect that little by little, year by year, the studio lost interest in her.  She was known around the lot as the pocket Grable which understandably annoyed her.

She and ultra-popular singer Dick Haymes had their first good roles in Irish Eyes Are Smiling (1944), the highly-fictional biography of Ernest Ball who composed many Irish songs.  The musical fantasy Where Do We Go from Here? (1945) has Fred MacMurray traveling through centuries and it's just plain idiotic.  Haver and Joan Leslie competed for his attentions.  In the film Leslie wins... in real life Haver would.

The best movie she made as I see it was The Dolly Sisters (1945), another highly-fictional biography.  They were real-life Hungarian sisters in the early 1900's who entertained on the stage and in beer gardens.  They were neither blonde nor as moral as Fox would have us believe.  And who played the other sister?  Yep, Betty Grable.  Haver got her part only after Alice Faye declined.  Popular John Payne as leading man helped with attendance as did a large and gorgeous musical catalog including I'm Always Chasing Rainbows, The Sidewalks of New York, Darktown Strutters' Ball and a popular one written for the film, I Can't Begin to Tell You.  Not too surprisingly it was reported the leading ladies did not get along.

A reteaming with Payne in Wake Up and Dream (1946) didn't produce the excitement Fox had hoped for but Three Little Girls in Blue (1946) was a solid hit. Vera-Ellen and Vivian Blaine were the other two in the oft-told story of three sisters looking for husbands.  The comedy and more good tunes helped sell it as did a fun romance between Haver and George Montgomery.  Vera-Ellen was a far better dancer than Haver and Blaine a better singer but Haver is the lead.

I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now (1947), another fictional biography of a song plugger, fared perhaps a little less well as some of the other similar films Haver did.  Fox was trying to make a star out of Mark Stevens who was woefully bland.

In 1947 she ran into trumpeter Jimmy Zito, whom she'd known from the Fio Rito days, and impulsively married him.  Hollywood and her family were stunned.  And in less than a year, the family's fears came true when Haver, despite being a Catholic, divorced him.  She immediately took up with a former boyfriend, studio dentist, Dr. John Duzik.

Can you imagine titling a movie Scudda Hoo, Scudda Hay?  The 1948 corn-fed musical got mixed reviews as did Haver whom critics called utterly unconvincing.  If it's known at all today it would be solely with film buffs who know it as one of Marilyn Monroe's early movies. 

Still another venture into the life of a song plugger is at the center of Oh, You Beautiful Doll (1949).  While I've never heard of Fred Fisher (and c'mon you haven't either), he was winningly played by cute little chubby S. Z. (Cuddles) Sakall and the advent of light opera in movies.  It is tuneful and Haver got to play the piano for the first time on screen, something at which she was very skilled.  Stevens was again her leading man for some reason.  This one connected more with the public than some of Haver's other films.

In the 14 years Grable was at Fox, she was never loaned to another studio... another sign of how highly-regarded she was at her home studio.  But at this point, not only was Haver loaned out to Warner Bros. for two films, but they were considered two of the best of her career.  Part of the reason why perhaps is that her costar in both films was WB's resident singing star, the immensely popular Gordon MacRae.

Nonetheless, Look for the Silver Lining (1949) is another highly-fictionalized (Hollywood has never been able to tell the truth in its bios) musical, this time about vaudeville and Broadway star Marilyn Miller.  She was a Ziegfeld star who had a magnificent professional life and of course a sad personal one.  Haver is a delight.  It was her last happy experience making movies and it couldn't have been lost on her that it happened at another studio.

After filming on Silver Lining wrapped and as Haver began planning her wedding to her dentist, he had a hemophilia attack while undergoing surgery and died.  To say the least she was beside herself with grief and clung tighter to her religion than she had in years.

With Gordon MacRae in Rosie O'Grady

Even at WB she couldn't escape the large shadow of Grable.  Haver starred in The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1950), a sequel to a film Grable had made seven years earlier.  Another turn-of-the-century nostalgia piece, its premise is about a father (James Barton) who refuses to allow his ambitious daughter to go on the stage.  Skip the silly plot, the fun comes from Haver, MacRae, Gene Nelson and Debbie Reynolds. 

Back at Fox I'll Get By (1950) is an updated version of Grable's Tin Pan Alley and with Grable's husband, Harry James, playing himself.  I always say if a remake can't be better than the original, why do it?  She was paired with another dull leading man Fox was pushing, William Lundigan, and then they costarred again in Love Nest (1951), a comedy in which Monroe and Thelma Ritter stole all the air from Haver.

Her final film, another Grable reject, is The Girl Next Door (1953).  The slight story has Dan Dailey as a cartoonist who falls for his musical-comedy star neighbor.  Some were charmed by its  animated sequences but it was getting time for Hollywood to stop making so many silly musicals and Haver must have sensed it.  That, together with Haver's general unhappiness, allowed for her to make an astonishing decision which made headlines around the world.

She was going to quit making movies and become a nun.  She entered the Sisters of Charity convent at Leavenworth, Kansas, and lasted for around seven months.  She claims she became very ill and dropped out as a result with full intention of returning.  Not only did she not return, but no one ever heard what the illness was.  It's more likely she was in over her head with a special emphasis put on her break from a family she clearly adored.

At some charity benefit John Wayne pushed Haver and MacMurray back together and they were married in 1954.  She became a happy wife and eventual mother of twins with one of Hollywood's most conservative and wealthy members.  She apparently never looked back.  They were married for 37 years.

I had seen her several times around the general West Los Angeles-Brentwood-Westwood areas.  The most memorable was an at upscale Brentwood market where she and a butcher were having a rather loud disagreement.

June Haver died at age 79 in 2005 of respiratory failure.  She lived 14 years after her husband's passing.  She had her religion and charities and her family.  She rarely mentioned her movie star years. 

She was a gifted child prodigy type who grew up to be a beautiful movie star in mainly so-so movies and always in the shadow of her studio's most popular star.  It seems a damned shame.

Ok, Miguel, there you are.



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