June Havoc
June Havoc (born Ellen June Evangeline Hovick, (✦November 8, 1912 – †March 28, 2010) was a Canadian American actress, dancer, writer, and stage director.
Havoc was a child vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother Rose Thompson Hovick, born Rose Evangeline Thompson. She later acted on Broadway and in Hollywood, and stage-directed, both on and off-Broadway. She last acted on television in 1990 in a story arc on the soap opera General Hospital, and she last appeared on television as herself in interviews in the "Vaudeville" episode of American Masters in 1997 and in "The Rodgers & Hart: Thou Swell, Thou Witty" episode of Great Performances in 1999. Her elder sister Louise gravitated to burlesque and became the well-known striptease performer Gypsy Rose Lee.
Early life
She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada sometime in the 1910s. For many years, however, 1916 was cited as her year of birth. Havoc acknowledged in her later years that 1912 was likely the correct year.
She was reportedly uncertain of the year. Her mother forged various birth certificates for both her daughters to evade child labor laws. Her life-long career in show business began when she was a child, billed as "Baby June."
Her sister, entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee (born as Rose Louise Hovick), was called "Louise" by her family members. Their parents were Rose Thompson Hovick, of German descent, and John Olaf Hovick, the son of Norwegian immigrants, who worked as an advertising agent and reporter at The Seattle Times.
Career
Vaudeville
Following their parents' divorce, the two sisters earned the family's income by appearing in vaudeville, where June's talent often overshadowed Louise's. Baby June got an audition with Alexander Pantages, who had come to Seattle, Washington in 1902 to build theaters up and down the west coast of the United States. Soon, she was launched in vaudeville and also appeared in Hollywood movies. She could not speak until the age of three, but the films were all silent. She would cry for the cameras when her mother told her that the family's dog had died.
In December 1928, Havoc, in an effort to escape her overbearing mother, eloped with Bobby Reed, a boy in the vaudeville act. Weeks later after performing at the Jayhawk Theatre in Topeka, Kansas on December 29, 1928, Rose reported Reed to the Topeka Police, and he was arrested. Rose had a concealed gun on her when she met Bobby at the police station. She pulled the trigger, but the safety was on. She then physically attacked her soon-to-be new son-in-law, and the police had to pry her off the hapless Reed. June soon married him, leaving both her family and the act. The marriage did not last, but the two remained on friendly terms.
Film and stage
She adopted the surname Havoc, a variant of her birth name. In 1936, Havoc got her first part on Broadway in the Sigmund Romberg operetta Forbidden Melody. In 1940, she gave a show-stopping performance as Gladys Bumps in the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, with Gene Kelly in the lead role and Van Johnson, who was in the chorus, along with future film director Stanley Donen. Based on their success, Havoc, Johnson and Kelly were beckoned by Hollywood. Havoc made her first film in 1942, and she began to alternate film roles with returns to the Broadway stage. From 1942 to 1944, Havoc appeared in 11 films, including My Sister Eileen with Rosalind Russell, No Time For Love with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray and Hello, Frisco, Hello with Alice Faye and John Payne. She then returned to Broadway in the 1943–1944 season, co-starring with Bobby Clark, in the Cole Porter musical Mexican Hayride, for which she received the Donaldson Award for best performance by an actress in a supporting role in a musical.
In 1944, Ethel Merman was set to star as the title character in the musical play Sadie Thompson with a score by Vernon Duke and Howard Dietz, directed and produced by Rouben Mamoulian. The musical play was based on the short story Rain by W. Somerset Maugham. The serious nature of the production was a departure from Merman’s string of successful musical comedies. Moreover, during rehearsals, Merman had difficulties memorizing the lyrics, and she blamed Dietz for his use of sophisticated and foreign words. She had her husband, newspaper promotion director Bob Levitt, tone down some of the lyrics. Dietz took exception to Merman’s singing the altered lyrics and gave her an ultimatum to sing his original lyrics or leave the show. In response, Merman withdrew from the production. Commentators have speculated that Merman's departure was probably due to her reluctance to assume such a serious role in her first dramatic musical.
Havoc left her starring role in Mexican Hayride and assumed the role written for Merman. The production of Sadie Thompson had a difficult out-of-town tryout with songs being deleted and other songs added. Indeed, even after the Broadway opening, musical numbers continued to be cut and other numbers added. Sadie Thompson opened on Broadway on November 16, 1944, to mixed reviews. Havoc received almost uniformly favorable reviews. She was called the “most enjoyable asset” of the show and praised for the “consummate skill of her artistry.” Her performance was described as “surprisingly effective“ and “truly touching,” and she was deemed a “worthy successor” to Jeanne Eagels, who had famously first portrayed the role on Broadway in the play Rain. The score and the book received mixed reviews, with the score called “undistinguished.” However, one reviewer compared the show favorably to Oklahoma!, which Mamoulian had also directed. Nonetheless, the show only lasted 60 performances and closed on January 6, 1945.
In 1945, Havoc was featured in the film Brewster's Millions and starred in The Ryan Girl on Broadway. Havoc's best-remembered film role was probably as the Jewish, yet antisemitic, secretary in the Elia Kazan Oscar-winning best film Gentleman's Agreement.
Havoc and her sister continued to get demands for money and gifts from their mother until her death in 1954. After their mother's death, the sisters then were free to write about her without risking a lawsuit. Lee's memoir, titled "Gypsy", was published in 1957 and was taken as inspirational material for the Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents Broadway musical Gypsy: A Musical Fable. Havoc did not like the way she was portrayed in the piece, which became a source of contention between the two, but gave her agreement in her sister's financial interest. Havoc and Lee reportedly were estranged for more than a decade but reconciled shortly before Lee's death in 1970.
In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the creation of the President’s Special International Program, under the United States Department of State and its agent, the International Cultural Exchange Service of America. The Program, with the American National Theatre and Academy, established the Theatre Guild American Repertory Theatre to perform a program of plays abroad. Havoc, as well as Helen Hayes, Leif Erickson, and others, made six-month commitments to participate in the repertory company. Three plays were selected to be performed in repertory: The Skin of Our Teeth, in which Havoc played Sabina and Hayes portrayed Mrs. Antrobus; The Miracle Worker, in which Havoc portrayed Mrs. Keller; and The Glass Menagerie, in which Hayes played the mother. The playwrights, Thornton Wilder, William Gibson, and Tennessee Williams, all personally supervised the productions of their plays. In February and early March 1960, the repertory company performed the plays at the National Theater in Washington, D. C. Commencing later in March, the company toured in Europe and the Middle East, performing the plays in major cities in Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Switzerland, and France. Later in the year, the repertory company toured Latin America, performing the same plays, and was the first American repertory theater company to perform in Latin America.
In 1959, Havoc's first memoir, "Early Havoc", was published. The New York Times critic called the book "spirited" and "entertaining." In the memoir, Havoc recounted her life from childhood to 1933, when she first competed in a marathon dance contest. The chapters alternated from a chronological progression to a description of the grueling marathon dance contest, detailing the desperation and degradation she experienced and observed. At the time of the book's publication, Havoc was appearing on Broadway in the play The Warm Peninsula, co-starring Julie Harris and Farley Granger. Harris read the memoir and was so taken with the dance contest chapters that she urged Havoc to write a play based upon that experience. At first, she demurred, never having written a play. However, Harris persisted, and when she said that she would star as Havoc's character in the play, Havoc was finally persuaded to write the play. Upon completion, the play Marathon ’33 was performed in a workshop at the Actors Studio. David Merrick optioned the play for Broadway with Gower Champion set to direct. However, Havoc canceled the option, explaining that Merrick wanted to turn the play into a musical. Champion responded that Havoc had canceled the option because Merrick had wanted her to work with another writer to revise the play, and she had refused.
Havoc then planned to present Marathon '33 in an actual dance hall, the Riviera Terrace ballroom near Columbia University. However, when the ballroom was sold, she agreed to present her play on Broadway. As director and choreographer, Havoc turned the stage at the ANTA Theatre into a dance hall. Marathon '33 proved to be a flop, opening on December 22, 1963, running for 48 performances, and closing on February 1, 1964. The play featured 34 actors, several of whom went on to highly successful careers, including Doris Roberts, Joe Don Baker, Conrad Janis, Gabriel Dell, and Ralph Waite. The play earned four Tony nominations, including nominations for Havoc for best direction of a play and for Harris as best actress in a play.
Havoc wrote one more play, I, Said The Fly; the book and lyrics for a musical, Oh Glorious Tintinnabulation; as well as a second memoir, "More Havoc". In reviewing "More Havoc",The New York Times critic called Havoc a "writer of consequence" and described the book as "a vivid, biting and painfully real remembrance of her own walk on the wild side of the Depression years and on up through her triumph in Pal Joey and Hollywood stardom."
During the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education provided funding in 1966 for the creation of professional theater programs in three cities: Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Providence, Rhode Island. In New Orleans, the professional theater company was named Repertory Theatre, New Orleans (“the Repertory Theatre”). The program involved 48,000 high school students, who saw four plays each year after reading the plays in class. The productions included guest actors, such as Havoc, who portrayed Mrs. Malaprop in The Rivals and also lectured in the schools.
After President Richard M. Nixon took office in January 1969, the federal funding ended. The Repertory Theatre sought to become self-sustaining and hired Havoc as the artistic director. She created a theater in a vacant 100-year-old synagogue, constructing a thrust stage with audience members seated on three sides. She also established an apprentice program for teenagers, an acting school, and a space for an African American theater group. Havoc was able to lure well-known actors to participate in productions, such as Julie Harris and Jessica Walter in The Women. After her second season as artistic director, Havoc resigned due to budgetary limitations. Her farewell production in November 1970 was The Skin of Our Teeth, with Havoc portraying Sabina and at age 58, performing on a trapeze 60 feet above the audience.
In the fall of 1982, Havoc became the eighth and final actress to portray the featured role of Miss Agatha Hannigan in the long-running original Broadway production of the musical Annie. She continued in the role until the show closed after more than four years on January 2, 1983.
In 1995, Havoc made her last New York stage appearance at age 82 as the title character in The Old Lady’s Guide to Survival at the Off-Broadway Lamb's Theater. Her performance was cited as one of the season's five best by an actress in a primary role by the editors of The Best Plays of 1994–1995. At age 88, Havoc starred with Dick Cavett in the Tennessee Williams one-act play Lifeboat Drill as part of the January 26, 2002, fourth Tennessee Williams marathon at the Hartford Stage Company.
Death
Havoc died at her home in Stamford, Connecticut, on March 28, 2010, from unspecified natural causes. She was believed to be 97 at the time of her death.
- More information is available at [ Wikipedia:June_Havoc ]
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