Ginger Rogers on June Allyson: "She's the girl every man wants to marry and the girl every woman wants as a friend"

Ginger Rogers as Ann Lowell in "42nd Street" directed by Lloyd Bacon and Busby Berkeley for the musical numbers. 42ND STREET (1933). The definitive backstage musical, complete with the dazzling newcomer who goes on for the injured star. Director: Lloyd Bacon. Cast: Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers, Dick Powell, Guy Kibbee, Una Merkel, Allen Jenkins, Ned Sparks, Edward J. Nugent, Robert McWade, George E. Stone, Louis Beavers, Patricia Ellis. Black and white, 89 minutes. Source: www.altfg.com Ginger Rogers scored her first leading role in a major film in the breezy 1934 musical Twenty Million Sweethearts. The slender tale of two radio singers, Buddy Clayton (Dick Powell) and Peggy Cornell (Rogers), whose romance sends their managers, particularly Buddy's fast-talking agent (Pat O'Brien), into a tailspin, provided Powell with more musical numbers, but Rogers proved that she didn't need to rely on her trademark wisecracking to hold the audience's attention.  

Dick Powell and Ginger Rogers sing "I'll String Along With You" in the movie "Twenty Million Sweethearts" (1934) directed by Ray Enright. In the beginning of the song Dick Powell's character suffers from a case of the nerves. The loan-out (to Warner Bros. for Twenty Million Sweethearts) was hardly a problem for Rogers. After all, her supporting performances in Warner's 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, had helped bring her to the attention of RKO management.

  In addition, the film provided a reunion with Powell, whose talent and good looks had impressed her when he played banjo as part of the orchestra for a singing engagement she had in Indianapolis. [One columnist wrote, "Dick wants all of Ginger's time. And gets it... so that looks serious on Dick's part. As for how serious it is on Ginger's part - she's been obeying her new boyfriend implicitly."]

  At the time, she had thought his good looks and youthful charm were a natural for the movies and was happy to find her prediction come true when Powell quickly hit the big time as the star of several lavish Busby Berkeley musicals at Warners. Source: www.tcm.com

Ginger Rogers once said of June Allyson (Dick Powell's third wife): "She's the girl every man wants to marry and the girl every woman wants as a friend."

  Dick Powell reinvented himself from the crooning hoofer of '42nd Street' and 'Footlight Parade' to private eye Philip Marlowe in 'Murder My Sweet' in 1944.

  "Philip Marlowe, though, is particularly impossible to replicate. Parker’s efforts were laughable, but even the movies have not had much better luck. Bogart was OK in The Big Sleep, but he completely misses Marlowe’s really rather weird “Cotton Mather in a trenchcoat” moral outrage. Chandler himself thought Dick Powell at least looked the most like Marlowe." Source: www.thedailybeast.com

Dick Powell, Lizabeth Scott and Raymond Burr in "Pitfall" (1948) directed by André De Toth Powell recreates his screen persona again in 'Pitfall' playing a distinctly disreputable businessman who puts his career, his family and eventually his own life on the line after getting a midlife sweet tooth for Lizabeth Scott. Miss Scott, who remains hale and hearty, burnished her noir chops as a loan out from Hal Wallis who had her under contact. It is one of her favorite pictures and arguably the best performance of her career. Lizabeth Scott's recollections about 'Pitfall': "The whole experience of making Pitfall was delicious! Dick Powell was gracious and kind. His attitude inspired me. He was a pleasure to work with. Andre de Toth was exceptional. We were a compatible group." Source: alankrode.com

The 1950's proved to be a golden era in the Powell marriage. June slowly became comfortable with Hollywood society and even gained the most coveted of Hollywood invitations — dinner with Mary Pickford at her fabled estate, Pickfair. Among the Powells’ most frequent guests were James and Gloria Stewart, George Murphy and his wife, Ronald Reagan, and Jane Wyman. While June taught herself to be a mother, hostess, and Mrs. Dick Powell, she became America’s favorite wife. Journalist Bob Thomas wrote in 1954: “June Allyson is the doll who has inherited Myrna Loy’s apron as the ideal spouse of the movies.”

  She was so convincing as Jimmy Stewart’s wife in “The Stratton Story”, “Strategic Air Command”, and “The Glenn Miller Story” that many reporters jokingly claimed she had two husbands — Dick and Stewart. June said good-naturedly that she saw more of Stewart than of Dick. She may have said this with a smile on her face, but the truth was that her marriage with Dick was moving downhill.

  John Wayne, director Dick Powell and editor Stuart Gilmore during the filming of "The Conqueror" (1956) Powell spent nearly every spare minute at RKO where he worked as a director for Howard Hughes. In addition, he helped found Four Star Television and was active in producing and performing for the small screen. June sadly said that “Richard was so tied up with business that the children kept asking ‘Where is Daddy’?”

June once admitted to Henry Scott: “I never did feel quite right about the roles I was called upon to portray —the gentle, kind, loving, doting wife who will stand by her man through anything!” In 1961, June reluctantly filed for divorce. It was a step she took with no pleasure; she spoke no harsh words against Dick throughout the hearings. In the 1950s, Powell was one of the founders of Four Star Television, with Charles Boyer, Ida Lupino and David Niven. Ida Lupino decided to make her television debut in the highly acclaimed Four Star Playhouse (1951). Dick Powell and Charles Boyer had been the original duo, with Joel McCrea nearly the third star. But McCrea lost interest, and David Niven took his place. During her separation from Howard Duff in 1960, Ida received a telephone call trom Dick Powell. Once a boyish crooner in the thirties, Powell had matured into a shrewd businessman, still handsome and quite wealthy. He and his wife, June Allyson, lived close to the Duffs in Mandeville Canyon. Allyson had begun an odd romance with Alan Ladd. Powell telephoned Ida one evening, despondent over the collapse of his marriage. He suggested that they meet, but Ida hesitated. A few years later, both were again in marital difficulties. 

In fact, June Allyson had gone to court to divorce Powell. He again telephoned Lupino and asked her to come to his Four Star office, ostensibly to discuss Ida's outline for a television series called A Matter of Minutes. But the conversation soon turned personal. He asked how she and Duff were getting along. Ida said they were separated. He said he and June were fighting like mountain lions. "We're a fine pair, aren't we?" Ida asked. "Yes, I think we'd make a damn fine pair," Powell replied. But it took virtually no time at all before June and Dick were seeing each other again.

  In 1962, they remarried. Dick also told the press: “June isn’t happy when she’s acting and neither am I.” In a cruel twist of fate, Dick and June’s newfound happiness was cut short after less than a year. Dick was diagnosed with cancer, which he had developed as a result of exposure to radiation left over from atomic testing done in the area he had filmed “The Conqueror.” For the next ten years, June fell into the depths of depression and alcoholism. She rarely left the house, and when she did, she donned wigs to conceal her identity. She confessed in her memoir: “I drank, and that along with a string of nervous breakdowns and my bad rebound marriage, almost finished me off… I wanted to die and I was too much of a coward to commit suicide. ”

  June Allyson’s dependence on a man for her happiness and her screen image as the perfect wife may not be politically correct today. However, in post-war America, she embodied the ideal woman and became a successor to Mary Pickford as America’s sweetheart. Privately, she survived a nearly debilitating childhood injury and recovered from depression and alcoholism. Publicly, she endeared herself to audiences more so than her glamorous contemporaries such as Hedy Lamarr or Lana Turner by becoming a symbol of American values.

  Her underlying vulnerability and self-consciousness makes introverts identify with her while her outspokenness and confidence appeal to extraverts. June summed herself up best when she said: “In truth, I was an introvert in training to be an extravert.” Source: fan.tcm.com