Romantic conflictive partners study, Dick Powell & June Allyson love story

20% of suicides between 2003 and 2020 were related to issues like breakups, conflict, and divorce. One in five suicides involved intimate partner problems, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the University of Georgia. Published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, the study found that mental health problems; life stressors, such as unemployment and family problems; and recent legal issues were more common among suicides related to intimate partner problems. Ayana Stanley, lead author of the study, which grew out of her doctoral research at UGA’s College of Public Health, says: “Romantic partners experience other kinds of relationship stressors, such as general hostility, arguments and jealousy. By sharing resources for seeking help, we send a strong message that every life has value, there is hope, and that seeking help is a sign of strength.” Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, with more than 48,000 Americans dying by suicide in 2021, according to the CDC. While previous research has shown a connection between suicides and intimate partner problems, the present study is the first to use data from 48 states; Washington, D.C.; and Puerto Rico to examine factors that were associated with intimate partner problem-related suicides. Of the 402,391 suicides of Americans aged 18 years and older during the study period, 20% involved intimate partner problems. Almost half of those individuals were between the ages of 25 and 44. The majority were white and male with at least a high school education. Source: news.uga.edu

June Allyson has sometimes been called “Allyson Wonderland.” The term is only applicable if used in reverse. Hollywood has been but little of wonderland to Allyson. She has not found stardom and greatness synonymous. Perhaps there was a time when June found films a challenge. She proved to herself that Hollywood could be taken, and she took it. A couple of years ago fans voted her their number one choice among feminine stars; the following year, their second. Though appreciative of the honor, June was not obviously impressed. Another star recently said to her, “It’s amazing that you can be so popular with all the bad pictures you make.” June didn’t know whether it was a slam or a compliment. “I never got around to asking exactly what she meant,” said June. She has a childlike quality of acceptance. Her click in movies neither amazed nor exhilarated her. When she wished to learn to dance, she went to see Fred Astaire in “The Gay Divorcee” seventeen times, studied his technique, and landed herself in a series of Broadway musicals that eventually brought her to Hollywood. 

It seems that everyone wants her to be a movie star but June herself. Making motion pictures is to her a job, like selling ribbons over a counter, and she does it well. Two years ago Dick Powell said to me, “June’s the best actress I know. But she’s the most un-actressy actress you’ll find in Hollywood. I honestly think that on a lot of mornings she wouldn’t go to work if I didn’t urge her. It’s not that I care whether she works or not; but I do believe she’ll regret passing up the opportunity later on.” At that time June had an adopted child and was expecting another of her own. She seemed to look at us in amused wonderment as we talked about her career. ‘Tm not a career woman,” she explained. “I don’t like to fight, and in this business to get what you want you have to fight. I’d just as soon stay home and raise babies. I’ve been the happiest since the time I learned the stork was headed my way. For the first time in my life I feel important. I’d like to have more babies. But Richard thinks he’s a bit too old for such a big family.”

Here indeed was a Hollywood phenomenon: a top star who didn’t care about being a star. When I asked if she went to the studio while not working, she cast those innocent eyes upon me as if I’d wanted to know if she wished a trip to the moon and said, “What for? I’ve got everything I love at home.” June’s contract with M-G-M ends within a year. I called Dore Schary, head of production at the studio, and asked him what he would think if June retired at the expiration of her contract. He hardly waited for me to get the words out of my mouth before replying, “She won’t retire.” “What are the qualities that make her such a big box office star?” I asked. “She has a fresh personality, an honest kind of personality,” he replied. “She lends validity to a role. She reminds me of something in a picture we just produced about Hollywood, ‘The Bad and the Beautiful.’ In it Kirk Douglas says to Lana Turner, ‘I know you’re a star, because when you’re on the screen no matter what you’re doing or who else is in the scene the people in the audiences are looking at you.’ That’s true of Junie.”

“What are her strong points as an actress?” I asked. “Any good actress must have understanding of other people’s problems, and June has,” he said. “She also has that curious quality called talent—the ability to project herself and make others believe what she does. You know when you turn out the lights in a big room and start showing pictures, the good actress makes you think, ‘This is really happening.’ She can make one scared, happy, or sad. June has this ability to make others think make-believe is real. This is what we call talent.” “Do you think she’d actually be happy in retirement?” I asked. “Oh, no,” he quickly responded. “She’s much too young to retire. Any personality as vibrant as she would be unhappy doing nothing. It would get tiresome. You know we all say that in a couple of years we’re going to retire, but somehow it seems that we never do.” This is the opinion of the man who’s June’s current boss; and the person who will likely get her signature on a new contract, if she puts one anywhere.

To get another answer, I went to see the popular young miss in her Bel Air home. She and Dick had just finished dinner before an open fire. June, wearing quilted lounging pajamas and red felt slippers, looked hardly more than a child herself. She had on horn-rimmed glasses, but removed them when she started talking. A mannerism she has of hugging her knees in her arms added to her juvenile appearance. Our conversation started with politics; and June began telling a story about Dick. He interrupted her with, “You’d better let me do the talking, because I’ll get the facts straight.” June stuck out her tongue at him and went right on with the story. On finishing, she asked, “Now, wasn’t that the way it was?” “Yes,” he admitted. “But you never give prefaces.”

“Oh, I don’t have to go on and on to tell a story,” said June. Dick looked at her in a patient sort of way, continued his discussion of politics, and stated that he was not a rabid Republican. “Thank God, you’re not a rabid anything,” chimed in June, whose every look and gesture indicated she was head over heels in love with the man. As she sat there with her chin on her knees, one couldn’t possibly conceive of her being among the most popular film stars on earth, with the question of her quitting pictures causing many a producer and exhibitor to tremble in his boots. “In his new picture, Richard co-starred with Lana Turner,” said June. Then as if suddenly recalling the event, she looked around with a very wise, impish expression on her face, and exclaimed, “Lana Turner! I was on that set every day Richard worked.”

Unlike most Hollywood stars, she appears bored with talking about movies. That’s one reason I believe she actually would like to retire. “Okay,” I said. “Now comes the $64 question. Why do you want to retire from pictures?” June settled back into a lounge as if accepting the inevitable. “It’s really very simple,” she said. “I love my career, and I’ve been very fortunate in movies. But I don’t see why I should waste time doing something not worthwhile. The studio sends me a script. I read it and say, ‘I don’t want to make the picture.’ The studio insists that I should. So I do. Then I’m told by studio officials that the picture wasn’t very good. I knew that before I started working on it. Actually I want to retire from bad pictures. People don’t want to see run-of-the-mill films. Take somebody making fifty dollars a week.” “Who do you know who makes fifty dollars a week?” Dick interrupted. “My father,” said June. “He does better than that,” said Dick. “You’re thinking of my step-father,” June corrected. “If my father wants to take his wife and three children to a movie, he has to spend seven dollars. He doesn’t have that much money to spend. He can’t afford it. 

That’s the reason I don’t want to waste either the studio’s or my time by making mediocre pictures. I’m married and have two children. I’d rather spend the time with my family.” She said: “My children need me. When little Pammy falls down and cuts her leg, the nurse tries to help her. But Pammy won’t let her. She says, ‘Oh, no, mummy will come downstairs and fix it.’ So I go downstairs and fix it, and everything’s all right. When I go to work that little thing is always in the driveway to see me off.” Mimicking the little girl’s voice, she continued, “Pammy says, ‘Will you be home before I go to bed, Mummy?’ That’s not easy to take. I want to spend time with my children. “But, as I said, I’m not a fighter. When anybody pats me on the head and asks me to do something, I’ll do it. If I go into a store, and a clerk shows me something, I’ll buy it. I don’t want anybody to be unhappy. But most of all, I don’t wish to be unhappy when I’m working. It makes me nervous. So I bring the state of mind home with me. I get mad at Dick and the kids. I grumble a lot, and that’s not right. I can’t blame the studio. 

If M-G-M had a good script suitable for me, I’d get it. I’ve had about everything a film actress could expect except an Oscar; but don’t get me wrong. I have no burning desire to own one. However, if I were ever nominated for an Academy Award, I’d be down sweeping out the theater so it would be clean for the ceremonies. And I’m not saying to M-G-M, ‘Give me a good picture, or I quit!’ That would be childish. For my birthday two years ago, the studio gave me an $18,000 dressing room. The boys said, ‘You’ve been a good girl, so here’s a present.’ “Although I’ve turned down scripts, I’ve never been suspended. A classic example is ‘The Stratton Story.’ When I read the script, I saw there was very little in it for the girl, so I said I wouldn’t do it. M-G-M told me I wouldn’t be suspended for refusing to make the film but I was still wanted for it. Then I put up the argument that studio officials—not me—claimed I was one of their biggest stars and asked why they didn’t protect their property. ‘Well and good,’ they said, ‘but we want you for the picture,’ So naturally I gave in. Then I went to Sam Wood, who was to direct the film, and explained that doing the picture was no wish of mine and that I’d have to depend upon him. “My part in that film was strictly Sam Wood. He and Jimmy Stewart would come to my dressing room after working hours and cook up whole scenes for me. Jimmy would say, ‘June’s my wife. She’s the big star. Moviegoers won’t want to look at me; they want to look at her.’ So we rebuilt the whole picture around that idea. Now it's my favorite film.

“I’ve repeatedly told June that as long as I can walk and breathe, there’s no necessity for her making a picture she doesn’t like,” said Dick. “But she’s an actress; and not only a hausfrau. And to an actress there’s nothing more gratifying than doing a job well. June wouldn’t be happy in retirement, because she’s got acting in her blood. An actress simply hasn’t the quality in her make-up to be indifferent to seeing herself fade from the public scene. If June had a substitute, got busy doing something else, I would think retirement would be okay for her.” “Busy!” exclaimed June. “I’m busy doing things that I want to do. I want to stay home.” “Then we’d better get off that subject,” said Dick. “But I do get sick of hearing actors talk about how nerve-wracking their business is; and how they hate it. Sid Luft gave the best answer to that I’ve ever heard. We were dining with him, the Edgar Bergens, and Judy Garland in San Francisco, when the players began to complain about the hardships of show business. Sid said, ‘Well, you’re either equipped for it or you are not. If you're not equipped, you should get out.’ ”

“I don’t mean that I’m neurotic,” said June. “I just can’t relax when I work. I love the film industry, and 1 think it’s been very kind to me. But Richard and the children are the most important things in my life. I want to continue in pictures if I find the work interesting, enjoyable, and rewarding—but not for the simple sake of being a movie star. So far I’ve never learned to lake it easy while making a picture. I never go into my dressing room to read or write letters, for instance. I work from the time I enter a sound stage until I leave.” “If you should retire, what would you do?” I asked. “I’d have another baby right away,” she said. Then she looked at me with sudden astonishment at the question. “What would I do!” she exclaimed. “Did you ever run a house and take care of two kids? We have a nurse, a butler, a cook, a gardener, and two secretaries. But they all have to be directed. I take charge of the children myself. Having a nurse is wonderful; but children also need the help of a mother. I teach Pammy to read, write, and draw. Then we go to the beach and on hikes. Passing on to them what little knowledge I have and seeing them discover new things for themselves is really thrilling. That’s why I insist on quitting pictures before I get too old for them. If I find good stories, I wouldn’t mind doing one film.”

On January 24th, 1961, June Allyson sued Dick Powell for divorce. “Did he (Dick Powell) ever hit you?” asked the judge trying to get to the root of the trouble. “Never!” snapped June. “He could never do a thing like that. It was just that he was always too busy.” On January 31, 1961, she won an interlocutory decree which, in California, means that if hubby and wife cease and desist living under the same roof for one year, they are, at the termination of said period, kaput! The decision made June very happy. And that evening, by way of celebration, she and a date really did the town. After a whirlwind round of many of cinema city’s favorite eating and watering spots the wee hours of the ayem found them at Junie’s front door. Two minutes later they were inside. Neither was seen until the morning. And who was the guy that June celebrated her divorce with? None other than Dick Powell, the hubby she had jettisoned that very afternoon. But the minute they set foot in the same house the ex-hubby became the ever-present hubby once again. That was the first time Mr. and Mrs. Powell ever brought their differences to a divorce court. However, it is by no means the first time they have ever had marital difficulties, nor is it the first time they’ve ever aired them. The public first got wind of the fact that all was not well at the house that Allyson and Powell built about seven years ago. It was the night of the Photoplay Awards and the banquet room at the Beverly Hills Hotel was jammed to capacity with the greats, the near greats and the ingrates of Hollywood. Some had come to receive awards, others had come just to be seen and still others were there for no other reason but to gawk. Dick Powell was there too. 

And, as a Hollywood star of long and good standing, he was asked to say a few words. The one-time musical comedy favorite made the usual thank-you comments and then snapped the big room to attention with a remark no one had anticipated. “For those of you who were worried,” said he, “everything’s okay again at the Dick Powells.” Those words came out of the blue. Some of the people who were retrieving their jaws from the vinicity of their knees had no idea there was or ever had been anything wrong with the Allyson-Powell merger. Others, however, knew that Dick had a problem with his petite, goodie-goodie blonde mate. They suspected too, that Dick had been getting her out of flirting with other men for the better part of their married life. But this was the first time they had ever heard Dick even hint that the marital knot wasn’t as tight as it could have been.

But then, what could he have said? He was stuck with the image of June Allyson that the Hollywood press agents had created. She was typed as “the girl next door,” “cute as a button,” “too nice to be naughty,” “all sweetness and light.” Why, if he had even hinted that sweet little Junie was a bit spaced, her fans—and they number in the millions—would have howled their heads off at the charge and, in the end, made him the “heavy”. But what those fans—and a lot of the hipsters in Hollywood—didn’t know was that June had, long ago, pushed the sugar bowl aside and reached for the spice shelf. It even reached the stage where she was admitting it. Sitting at a cocktail table with a few other Hollywood beauties, she flipped a pretty finger at the little-girl frock her bosses like her to wear and declared: “I’ve had enough of all this. I’d like to land in the middle of a nice juicy scandal—just to prove I’ve graduated into a woman) but no one was believing her. But just so no one would think she was a doll given to idle chatter she set out to prove there was a lot more to June than a goodie-goodie personality and a Peter Pan collar. And the first guy she proved it with was the old swinger himself, Dean Martin. Rumor has it that he was even sober at the time. Junie first met Dean when he and his zany ex-sidekick, Jerry Lewis, were appearing at Slapsie Maxie Rosenbloom’s in Hollywood. After the meeting, June became a regular ringsider at the club night after night. And she finally capped the caper by going right along with Dean when he moved from Hollywood to a nightery in Las Vegas. The citizens of that so-called sin-suburb are supposedly used to anything, but their raised eyebrows, as they watched June and Dean rocket around the town, proved that the Las Vegas natives weren’t as blase as they were cracked up to be. As one gossip columnist itemed it, “Dean Martin and June Allyson are having a ball in Vegas where they’re spinning faster than the roulette wheels.”

Mr. Powell did a lot of hollering about this secret liaison that the tabloids made public, and the betting around Hollywood was two to one that Junie would be given her walking papers. But it never happened. Dick may have been sore but he wasn’t sore enough to call the whole thing off. Just what he had to say to Junie when she returned from her Vegas adventure isn’t known, but it must have been quite a storm. During his Gotham safari, a good friend met Dick Powell outside Hollywood’s Brown Derby. “How’s June?” politely inquired the friend. “You mean Stupid?” Powell snapped. “I don’t know how Stupid is. Ask me another question.” This was all Dick said publicly about the affair. About another chapter in her life, June recently had this to say, “About five or six years ago there were many items in the columns linking me with Alan Ladd. What actually happened was that he was having problems, and I was sympathetic. Because of the nonsense in the columns Dick and I stopped seeing Ladd. Funny thing, he was also Dick’s friend, not only mine.” After the Ladd affair, Dick decided that a short leash on June was in order. And he figured the way to keep that leash tight was to spend more time with her. And how best to do that but to direct her pictures. So he got himself the job of director on A Night To Remember starring June Allyson and Jack Lemmon. “When they (June and Jack) were on the set, the phonograph in her dressing room would play for hours while the two of them were in there,” one of the co-workers recalls. “They must have been talking, because that dressing room was too small for dancing.” Dick held his temper as long as he could but finally, when Jack flubbed his lines, he blew up and told him what he thought of his acting. June leaped from her chair and flew at her husband, screaming, “Don’t you dare talk to him like that!” The movie making ended on a note that was becoming familiar to the Powells in general and June’s playmates in particular. Lemmon and his wife got a divorce. They didn’t say why, which left the matter open for the gossips to have a field day in the press.

Once again, however, the Powells weathered the storm. But though Junie has been a bit of a gad-about she is not the only one who contributed to the plights and plagues of the Powells. Dick, too, has done his share to keep the marriage on the rocks. And though his straying has not manifested itself in another woman his way of life has, nonetheless, been pretty hard on June. In the Powell household Dick is the dominant figure. He chose the house they live in. He decorated it. He hires the domestic help. He even plans the meals. An example of Dick’s disregard for June’s opinions came when he purchased their sixty-three-foot cruiser. The boat cost $103,000. “I must have looked at a hundred and fifty boats with Richard,” says June, “yet he wound up buying one I’d never even seen.” His work keeps him away from home more than is good for any marriage. When June calls to ask what time she can expect him, she’s usually told, “I’ll be there when I get through.” “Once,” she told a reporter, “I said to our houseman, Frank, “I haven’t heard from Mr. Powell this afternoon. I guess he’ll be home for dinner.’ Frank said, ‘Oh, we’re having fifty people for dinner tonight. Mr. Powell called and told me what to serve.’ ” Out of the fifty June knew exactly two. Dick is a man not given to emotional outburst. He is never too sad or too happy. He rides a middle course. This is the direct opposite of June’s extremely sad or extremely happy personality. But despite the weaknesses on both sides, the Powells plod on. They’ve had their differences, their separations and even a divorce, but they’re still together. Some say they’re together because of the children. Still others say it’s because they’re used to each other. It could be for any of the above reasons. It could also be because they dig each other. It’s possible, you know. —Harold Monroe, Inside Story magazine, 1952 and 1962. Source: vintagepaparazzi.com