Memories of June Allyson have pretty much evaporated. Only boomers remember her, and vaguely at that. Her peak movie-star decades were the ’40s and ’50s. Born in 1917, she’d aged out of romantic or loving-wife roles by the late ’50s and had shifted her focus to television. I’ve always thought of Allyson as Doris Day without the singing — a petite blonde with a warm heart, a spunky personality and a great smile.
But whenever Allyson’s name comes up (which is infrequently) I don’t think of her movie roles. I think, rather, of her extra-marital affairs with Dean Martin and Alan Ladd. I’m genuinely fascinated by the marked contrast between the spirited, bright-eyed girl from the movies and the actual woman Allyson was when temptation occasionally called.
From Nick Tosches‘ “Dino: Living High In the Dirty Business of Dreams“: “[In 1948, Martin] took up with America’s quintessential girl-next-door, June Allyson. On August 10th, the day after Allyson attended the Martin-and-Lewis opening at Slapsy Maxie’s, she and her husband Dick Powell took delivery of a two-month-old baby from the adoption agency that had long kept them waiting. It was the happiest day of their marriage. She told Dean so a few weeks later, on the night she first went to bed with him.”
Allyson and Ladd’s affair happened during the filming of The McConnell Story (’55), a reputedly schmaltzy drama which I’ve never seen and probably never will see. Ladd fell hard for Allyson. Everyone’s heard the story about him calling Powell and saying “I’m in love with your wife,” and Powell responding with “Everyone’s in love with my wife.”
Both Ladd and Allyson grappled with alcohol issues. You could see the puffiness in Ladd’s features by the mid ’50s — his appearance in Shane, when he was 38, was his most glamorous.
Allyson (her real name was Eleanor Geisman) had it rough as a kid. After Powell’s cancer-related death in ’63, her drinking reportedly became…well, noticable. She turned things around in the ’70s. She became a Depends spokesperson for a couple of decades. Allyson was a staunch Republican.