Biography
Born on 10 June 1926 in Rock Island, Illinois, as June Stovenour, the future performer died on 4 July 2005 in Brentwood, California. Her lively presence enlivened numerous 20th Century-Fox musicals throughout the 1940s and into the early 1950s, after which she stepped away from the screen upon wedding the prominent movie star Fred MacMurray. Already recognized in childhood as a versatile talent—she reportedly performed on piano with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra—she performed with dance orchestras until securing the role of a hat-check attendant in Alice Faye’s 1943 picture The Gang’s All Here. The following year she appeared opposite vocalist Dick Haymes in When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and was widely regarded as Betty Grable’s likely successor. During production of Where Do We Go From Here? in 1945 she saw her character lose MacMurray to Joan Leslie, yet the pair later formed a real-life partnership. In the interim she appeared in a string of nostalgic musicals set near the turn of the century, among them The Dolly Sisters, Three Little Girls In Blue, Wake Up And Dream, I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, Look For The Silver Lining, Oh You Beautiful Doll, The Daughter Of Rosie O’Grady, and I’ll Get By, the last released in 1950. Her final screen credit, The Girl Next Door, paired her with Dan Dailey in 1953; the film ranks among her strongest and stands as her sole contemporary-costume project. That February she abandoned Hollywood at the height of her popularity to join the Sisters of Charity Convent in Xavier, Kansas, a move many dismissed as calculated publicity. She departed the order after seven and a half months, explaining that she “did not have the physical strength to withstand the strain of religious life.” Reacquainted with MacMurray, she married him in June 1954 and never returned to motion pictures. The eighteen-year age gap—he was 45, she 28—drew considerable comment, yet the couple raised their twin daughters and remained together until his death at age 83 in 1991.