June Allyson's advice to young girls

The reason I dare to cry out, “Stop kidding yourself, girls” to every teenager is that I know what I’m talking about. When I was in my teens, I had to learn the hard way how to get on speaking terms with personal happiness. The teens can be such a miserable experience. Mine often were. I know from the letters that so many of them write me that they are a having bad time. So let me tell you, that doesn’t have to be. If you will just get wise to what is your own personal self, you’ll be able to have the world on a string. You can be happy as Christmas 365 days a year if you will just get your thinking in the right channel. And remember that nobody—but nobody—makes you a droop but you. It’s all a matter of not kidding yourself. It’s all you. As the song says, you are the one. I used to kid myself, just as much as you probably do, when I was in my teens. I used to dream. I seldom “did anything.” 

I used to have elaborate daydreams about the rich, handsome man I’d marry, the big house I’d live in, the comforts I’d have. Fantastically enough, I achieved all that. For instance, the other evening, my husband Richard came home and gave me a present. It was a diamond in a most unusual setting. A shadowbox of gold had been put around the stone to make it glitter even more brilliantly than it would have naturally. Now it wasn’t our anniversary or anything. Richard and I try to make every day a cause for celebration. So whenever I open a box and saw the lovely presents, my thoughts wandered back to my teens. At that time I would have wanted the ring for the ring itself. Now I was happy with it because of the love it expressed. My husband had completely surprised me with it because since I’ve been married my plain gold band was all I wanted. If Richard had brought me a rose, I would have been just as pleased. And this, I think, proves a point: when we don’t keep wanting “things” but learn to appreciate the values we have, the good things are added unto us when we least expect them. You think that you have to be beautiful to be happy? That’s crazy! Just remember that a middle-aged plain woman with a mole on the side of her face, took Edward VIII off the throne of England—and they lived happier ever after! 

The other day I heard Doris Day saying: "Dick Powell is one of the most intelligent, nicest and richest men in Hollywood. Did a tall, beautiful, madly-dressed doll get him? No, Dick belongs to a wonderful gal with a sense of humor and a big heart, June Allyson." Doris is such a sweetheart, we are very good friends. The trouble is when we are growing up, we fool ourselves. We say to ourselves, “I’d be more popular if I were prettier.” George Bernard Shaw, who conceded his first official interview in America to Louella Parsons, said it originally. “Youth,” he said, “is so wonderful that it shouldn’t be wasted on the young.” I can’t top that, but as one woman to another I want to say—why waste your youth? Get wise to the great special gift that life has given you. Part of the reason I am sounding off at this particular time is those terrifying headlines in the papers, telling about high school kids taking drugs. Shocking as these headlines are, overwhelming as the figures on addiction prove to be, you and I have the blessed assurance that in terms of the teen-age population of this country, they are still small. But the very fact that the drug habits have spread to such extent—is a ghastly symptom of the unhappiness too many teenagers are experiencing. Such a habit is the ultimate end in self-deception. It is the absolute summing up of wrong values. It not only drags its victims down into a living hell, but often their families and friends too. The pathos of these addicted girls and boys is that they aren’t “bad.” The touching thing is that they, and their families, have to pay such a killing price just because they have their values all wrong. These unwise kids want a momentary thrill, a purely physical thrill, which, when it wears off, will leave them in such agony as to be almost unendurable. 

But a girl who says, “If I used my brains more, I would be more popular,” you can count on the thumbs of one hand. When I was fifteen and “in love” for the very first—and I was sure the absolute last—time, I thought my life was unendurable because my mother wouldn’t permit me to see that boy morning, noon and night. My mother said, “I absolutely will not you go steady with any boy until you are at least eighteen.” I thought then that she was cruel. I know now that she was right. Memorize this truth: The thing that you want to do secretly, or any act or deed you want to do surreptitiously, isn’t probably the best thing for you. In contrast, think of those wonderful words in the marriage ceremony “in the face of God and this company.” The right things you will always want to do that way. That’s how you know they are right. When those nearest and dearest to you are looking on, you begin on a sure foundation. When we are growing up, we fool ourselves. We tell ourselves, as an alibi, “I’d be more popular if I were prettier” or “better dressed.” Or “had a nicer home.” It took me ages before I realized that to go out every night was idiotic.

Now I know that my happiest evenings are spent at home with my family. It’s just a case of growing up. Once I sang a love song in a night club with the tears running down my face. I thought I had lost a love that was important to me. It was a cold, winter night in New York. I felt so sorry for myself. I told myself I had given “everything” to that love. I would, I told myself, “never love again.” The thing you have to learn about love is that it is inexhaustible. The more love you give, the more love you still have. When you aren’t yet sixteen, you haven’t the experience to distinguish between quantity and quality. You haven’t, I mean, unless you are a lot smarter than I was at that age. Your aim is to be a popular girl. I don’t blame you for that. But what do you mean by popular? Are you getting quality or quantity? Stop kidding yourself. Find your real values. When I see beautiful girls like Hedy Lamarr or Ursula Thiess, I’m amazed I’m on the screen. When I see an actress like Shirley Booth, I ask, “And I get by with acting?” Think of it this way: Do you know everything about any one subject in the world? Or do you know one thing about every subject? Of course you don’t. Nobody does. But every single thing you learn puts you that much ahead. And every kindness you do puts you that much ahead, too. —June Allyson for Photoplay Magazine, August 1953