The MGM Golden Era: June Allyson

"She's skinny; she's a little bowlegged; she can't sing much. She's certainly no raving beauty, and she's got a speaking voice that seems to be crying for cough drops after every syllable." That's how one plain-speaking insider described June Allyson, who, for filmgoers since the 1940s, was always been the wistful girl next door, wearing Peter Pan collars and starched skirts. It was an image which fit neatly into the "family" of MGM stars. She fortuitously began in motion pictures in the middle of America's involvement in World War II, a time when the public held high in esteem the wholesome girlfriend or wife left behind by a soldier going to war. June projected this wholesomeness very convincingly and the public eagerly went to see her films. 

As a teenager, June entered Amateur Night dance contests in the Bronx, and even though she never won, she kept on dancing. Things were a little better at home, now an apartment at 1975 Bryant Avenue, since her mother had remarried. After high school June began to seek jobs as a dancer. There was a $50 a week play date at the Club Lido in Montreal and then appearances in several movie shorts for Vitaphone and Educational Films. When June was twenty, she got a part in the chorus line of a Broadway musical Sing Out The News. When that flopped, she joined the chorus line of the Copacabana nightclub until she was hired for the chorus of Jerome Kern–Oscar Hammerstein II's musical Very Warm For May. That show opened in 1939, and one of her colleagues in the chorus was Vera-Ellen. This role got June into Rodgers and Hart's Higher And Higher. She recalls: "I've been in more flops than you can imagine. It was Richard Rodgers who was always keeping them from firing me, as every dance director wanted to do." 

According to June, it was MGM producer Joe Pasternak who persuaded Louis B. Mayer to look at her screen test by pleading to the studio kingpin: "Please look at this test and do just two things. Look at her eyes and listen to her voice. Don't pay any attention to anything else about her. These are distractions we can iron out." Thus was born the celluloid June Allyson, the diminutive blonde/redhead with the surprisingly husky voice (caused by chronic bronchitis and enlarged vocal cords—in 1961 she underwent a throat operation).

The Stratton Story (1949) was a very good biopic starring James Stewart as the baseball player who loses his leg in a hunting accident. June's husband Dick Powell had persuaded her to accept the assignment as the typical wife-next-door, because he was perceptive enough to know she had far more competition in glamorous musical roles. The Stratton Story displays her beautifully in her screen synthesis as an unsophisticated Margaret Sullavan type of screen star. The final straw for June was when the promised role in The Long, Long Trailer (1954) was handed to ex-MGM player Lucille Ball. However, June went into the top-grossing The Glenn Miller Story (1954) at Universal at the special request of James Stewart. 

Dick Powell, who played Napoleon Bonaparte's younger brother who woos Dixie American Marion Davies in the costume musical Hearts Divided (1936), would recount his experiences on the set to Tony Thomas. Powell recalled that William R Hearst would not allow Marion to perform unless he was on the set. Usually the mogul would be accompanied by three bulky associates, who said nothing but looked about with great intentness. "Those love scenes," Powell remembered, "were sheer torture. If I didn't make them look real, the director [Frank Borzage] would never use me again. If I made them too real, I was sure I was going to get a bullet in the back. Marion was doing her part in the long kissing closeups, but I was damn near choking to death. That picture lasted ten weeks, and I thought I'd die before I got out. I was still shaking months afterwards." By 1937 Hearst's empire was beginning to crumble and Marion at age forty retired from the cinema. 

Her last performance was in a dramatization of The Brat on Lux Radio Theatre in July 1936. On September 22, 1961, Marion died at age sixty-four, leaving an estate of eight million dollars. Perhaps Mary Astor, who worked with Marion in Warner Brothers' Page Miss Glory (1935), summed up the off-screen Marion best: "She was not hard and inquisitive, nor was she a dumb blonde. She was bright and funny. Her warmth and kindness could have taught many of us a great deal about the art of loving." That definition of Marion definitely might cast doubt about her veiled depiction in Center Door Fancy (written by Dick Powell's ex-wife Joan Blondell) as a vengeful shady character. Yet, the worst character portrayed by Blondell is Amy O'Brien (inspired by June Allyson) that maybe reflects more on Blondell's troubled mind than Allyson's alleged "naughtiness."

If it were not bad enough that the June Allyson faction at MGM was burying Gloria's film career for good, she up and retired for two years when she wed actor John Payne. However, she looked back on the studio system with fondness: "You lived there, you worked there, you grew up there. You knew everyone around you. We were groomed, step by step, for stardom. Nobody was thrown into something before they were ready for it. And I miss the movies that were made for the sheer entertainment of the audience." Divorced in 1969 from her third husband Richard Fincher (who later became a Florida state senator), in 1971, at the persuasion of her good friend June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven moved back to California. She said of her old glamour MGM years: "I didn't begin to grow up until I was forty; and now I can face reality, but escaping from it via 'sheer entertainment' can be fun."

Bottle-blonde bombshell of 1940s and 1950s "B" films, Adele Jergens (who dated Ronald Reagan) typically played hardcore floozies and burlesque dancers. In the early 1940s, she worked as a Rockette, and was named the Number One Showgirl in New York City. She got her first break understudying Gypsy Rose Lee as a burlesque strip artist in the Broadway show "Star and Garter" in 1942. Lee fell ill for two weeks during the show's run. A talent scout for Columbia Pictures caught Jergens's performance and signed her to a contract. A year later, in 1943, Joan Blondell had displaced Gypsy Rose Lee as Mike Todd's girlfriend. It was hard on Lee, as Jergens (who played Marilyn Monroe's mother in Ladies of the Chorus) and others observed. Conveniently, Blondell ignored Lee largely in her confessional tome.

In 1954, June Allyson said: "We all seem to have an instinct to blame someone or something for personal tragedy." Was she possibly alluding to Blondell's stubborn accusations and exaggerations towards her? During Allyson and Powell marriage crisis in 1957, Beverly Ott reported that Powell sighed: "Sometimes it seems all the love in the world is not enough for June." Although Powell was thought of as a powerful mogul in Hollywood, at the time of his death, his estate was estimated to be worth 2 million. The divorce of June Allyson from Glenn Maxwell was prompted by the terms of Powell's will: She would receive $4,000 monthly if she stayed unmarried. Allyson was quoted as saying that Maxwell was "the nicest man I've ever known—besides Richard." 

Sources: The MGM Stock Company: The Golden Era (2015) by James Robert Parish and The Dick Powell Story (1992) by Tony Thomas 

Distinctiveness and femininity: Diane Chambers

Sam Malone and Diane Chambers may have had their fair share of tension as an on-again off-again couple on "Cheers," but 30 years later, Ted Danson (Malone) thinks Shelley Long (Chambers) has everything to do with the show's success. "You really put us on the map," Danson told Long at the "Cheers" 30th Anniversary Reunion Dinner, according to Entertainment Tonight. "And this is not my opinion," Danson remarked. "This is everybody's. We hadn't seen a character like Diane Chambers for years. You really put 'Cheers' on the map with your astounding performance." Danson told People in 1987: “I cannot say anything bad about my partner. I mean, my wife and I have terrible arguments sometimes, and they’re our business. Our relationship, Shelley’s and mine, has included being happy with each other and not being happy with each other.” Danson recently added, "Shelley's process would have infuriated you if it hadn't been purposeful. But it was purposeful—it was her way of being Diane—and there's not a mean bone in Shelley's body. I was in heaven." Source: huffpost.com

Distinctiveness and femininity, rather than symmetry and masculinity, affect facial attractiveness across the world. In a new study it was observed that males found the more feminine faces of women to be more beautiful, whereas masculinity had little to no impact on women’s perception of male attractiveness. The study also noted that facial symmetry did not influence attractiveness perceptions. This new research was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior Volume 45, Issue 1, January 2024. Female faces exhibiting higher sex-typicality, meaning those appearing more feminine, were universally judged as more attractive. However, increasing the masculinity of male faces did not influence their attractiveness ratings. Overall, women were rated as more attractive than men. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com

Happy Valentine's Day!

Dick Powell and Joan Blondell, late 1930s. 

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward.

Love and comedy at first sight: Lucille Ball

Lucille Ball: "The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age."

Allegedly, Ginger Rogers would confess to her friend Lucille Ball: “Let’s face it: Astaire is a great dancer, perhaps the best, but he has less sex appeal than Gabby Hayes… you know, the sidekick of Roy Rogers with the beady eyes?” It's rumored that Ginger would have a brief fling with Cary Grant when they co-starred in Monkey Business (1952) with Marilyn Monroe. Although Rogers continued to date Desi Arnaz on and off for a few weeks, her romantic attentions soon began to focus on David Niven, with whom she was making Bachelor Mother (1939). It was said that homespun Jimmy Stewart kept a diary of all the beautiful glamour girls he’d seduced, and whereas Ginger’s name was near the top, other conquests included Jean Harlow, Rosalind Russell, Lana Turner, Norma Shearer, Olivia de Havilland, Marlene Dietrich, Margaret Sullavan, and June Allyson.

Stewart had lost his virginity to Ginger Rogers. Ginger and Lucille shared something in common: They believed in ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em'. Ginger’s recent victories: She had received a Best Actress Oscar for her dramatic role in Kitty Foyle (1940), for which she beat out both Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis. Ironically, on that same night, her former lover, James Stewart, won the Best Actor Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, “stealing” the picture from Kate Hepburn and Cary Grant. As sometimes happens in Hollywood, Stewart competed against his best friend Henry Fonda, who had been nominated for his performance in the movie classic, The Grapes of Wrath (1940). The first time Desi Arnaz spotted Lucille Ball, he didn’t know who she was. He mistook her for “some broken-down hooker.” She had taken a lunch break from a fight scene with Maureen O’Hara during the filming of Dance, Girl, Dance (1940). 

Arthur Freed hired Brooklyn-born Edward Buzzell as director of the film adaptation of Best Foot Forward. Both Freed and Buzzell agreed to offer the lead role in Best Foot Forward to Lucille Ball, who would portray a glamorous movie star who visits a military academy filled with young men lusting for her. Harry James and his Orchestra provide the music, performing such numbers as “The Flight of the Bumblebee.” Freed wanted to employ some members of the original Broadway cast, notably June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven and Nancy Walker. According to Lucille, “When I was told that William Gaxton had been cast as my leading man, I told Arthur Freed, ‘You must be kidding.’ Then I found out he was to be my press agent, not my on-screen lover. What a relief.” The New York Daily Mirror proclaimed, “Lucille Ball handles the comedy and lines in a manner reminiscent of the late Carole Lombard.”

Returning from a USO bond tour, Lucille was notified by MGM that her next picture, Meet the People (1944) would co-star Dick Powell. In kidding fashion, June Allyson warned Lucille to keep her hands off Dick Powell, Lucille’s new co-star, even though he was still married to Joan Blondell. Lucille, still in her happy phase of her marriage with Desi, assured June she wouldn't betray their friendship, and she seemed to notice how cold Powell behaved towards Lucille during the shooting. Meet the People bombed at the box office, losing $720,000 for MGM. Dick Powell, cast in Meet the People as “Swanee” Swanson, has won a date with Lucille Ball as part of a fund-raising contest for War Bonds. At the time, though still married to Joan Blondell, a former friend of Lucille’s, Powell was “heavy dating” June Allyson.  

In his biography, Lucy and Desi, Warren G. Harris wrote: “To get back at Desi, Lucy started going out on public dates with other men, usually younger actors from MGM like Peter Lawford and Scott McKay. Each of them at different times was seen escorting her to such popular spots as Ciro’s or Cocoanut Grove.” She never spoke publicly about her affair with Lawford, although she sometimes discussed it with her longtime confidant Barbara Pepper. “I agree with George Cukor,” she confessed. “Peter is a lousy lay. Where is Desi when I need him?” For an actor who allegedly was such a lousy lay, Lawford seduced a number of world class beauties and movie stars: Anne Baxter, Dorothy Dandridge, Ava Gardner, Judy Garland, Rita Hayworth, Rhonda Fleming, Janet Leigh, Marilyn Maxwell, Lana Turner, Kim Novak, and June Allyson. Lawford was also a key player in the life of Marilyn Monroe, to whom he became scandalously linked, especially at the time of her murder.

Lucille did not like her role in Easy Living as a secretary to Lloyd Nolan playing Coach Lenahan. She and Nolan had worked smoothly together ever since filming Two Smart People (1946) with John Hodiak. Victor Mature played Pete Wilson, the star professional quarterback who has no future in football. His doctor had diagnosed him with a diseased heart because of a childhood bout with rheumatic fever. He doesn’t want to tell his scheming wife, Liza (Lizabeth Scott), who wants to be a big success as an interior designer, and will go far to achieve her goal, even if it means getting involved with other influential men. Pete’s best friend is Pappy McCarr (Sonny Tufts), who will eventually replace Pete as the team’s star football player. As his secretary, Lucille is in love with Pete, but in the end, he returns to his errant wife, who (unconvincingly) promises to mend her ways. 

In third billing, Liza, the wife of footballer Mature, Lizabeth Scott had a far better role than Lucille’s. One critic later called Scott “the most beautiful face of film noir to emerge from the late 1940s and early ‘50s.” Lucille had seen only one of her movies, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) in which Scott had co-starred with Kirk Douglas and Barbara Stanwyck. “Scott made me feel like a relic of the 1930s,” Lucille said. “Here I was still impersonating Carole Lombard as the wise-cracking, sexy, self-actualizing type in one of her screwball types.”

Lucille met with producer Robert Sparks, who was better known as the husband of Penny Singleton, who played “Blondie Bumstead” in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was one of the early members of the film colony urging Lucille to consider the newly emerging medium of television. In time, he would leave the movie industry altogether and join CBS as a producer, developing such superhit TV series as Gunsmoke (1955) and Perry Mason (1957), among other shows. Lucille became an expert on Manhattan after dark. She danced at the Cotton Club in Harlem to the music of Louis Armstrong. Still fully dressed in her evening clothes, she often watched the sun rise over Central Park, sometimes—after a long night—ordering breakfast in Greenwich Village. She was a familiar sight at supper clubs and at lavish parties.

Lucille Ball and Joan Blondell possibly dated film producer Pat DiCicco (who married Thelma Todd in 1932). Carole Landis was another one of Pat DiCicco's lovers. When she worked as a band singer in San Francisco, she allegedly turned tricks on the side and later Carole landed a job in the chorus at Warners she dated Busby Berkeley who featured her prominently in Hollywood Hotel and in the big dance finale of Varsity Show. Carole also tried her luck with Dick Powell during Varsity Show (1937) and with Ronald Reagan in 1938 (when Reagan co-starred with Joan Blondell's sister Gloria in Accidents Will Happen). Berkeley wanted to marry Carole but his mother did not approve of their romance. In the spring of 1938 Irving Wheeler, Carole's estranged husband, sued Busby Berkeley for alienation of affection. The story made headlines all over the country and although Wheeler lost the case the bad publicity hurt her reputation. Carole's romance with Busby Berkeley ended in the summer of 1938.

Lucille Ball was originally offered the Carole Landis role in the film noir I Wake Up Screaming. Wanting to star in The Big Street, Lucille turned down the role, in which she would have played the sister of Betty Grable, a former lover of Desi Arnaz, and the pinup girl of World War II. Lucille had long known of Betty Grable’s affair with Desi for a while. In 1959, at a recent dinner party, a former co-worker asked Lucille Ball and Ann Sothern if RKO Studios had changed since the days when they worked there together. 'Yes,' Ann replied, 'Lucille owns it now.' Lucille added: 'And Ann made over the wardrobe department for her dressing room.' Two decades ago, both Lucille and Ann were struggling for roles and recognition at RKO. In late 1950s, Lucille and Desi Arnaz were proprietors of the lot. 'I love Lucille and I know she loves me,' remarked Ann Sothern in her luxurious dressing room. 'Furthermore, I'm one of the few people who call her Lucille.'

'I understand her. A lot of people think she is gruff and tough. But that's just her way. She's soft inside.' 'My career was built on the roles Ann turned down,' Lucille claimed. 'I doubt that,' Ann countered. 'I wasn't that important.' 'Yes, but she didn't know some of the things that went on behind the scenes.' Lucille replied. At any rate, they became fast friends. Lucille recalls going to Ann with a problem: Her family was coming to California to stay and she wasn't making enough to fix up a house in the manner she hoped for. Ann went in and decorated the place with her unerring taste. 'I've always spent money,' Ann admitted. 'My theory is that whatever you spend will eventually come back to you. I've spent money even when I didn't have it.' —"Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz: They Weren't Lucy and Ricky Ricardo" (Blood Moon Productions, 2021)

About her meeting Desi Arnaz for the first time, Lucille Ball replied: "It wasn't love at first sight. It took a full five minutes."

Passionate love is rooted in the reward circuitry of the brain—the same area that is active when humans feel a rush from cocaine. In fact, the cravings, motivations and withdrawals involved in love have a great deal in common with addiction. Its most intense forms tend to be associated with the early stages of a relationship, which then give way to a calmer attachment form of love one feels with a long-term partner. This has a slightly different chemistry but still involves the reward centres of the brain. What all this means is that one special person can become chemically rewarding to the brain of another. 

Love at first sight is possible if the mechanism for generating long-term attachment can be triggered quickly. One line of evidence is that people are able to decide within a fraction of a second how attractive they find another person. This decision appears to be related to facial attractiveness, although men also favour women with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7, no matter what their overall weight is. Ayala Malack-Pines, a psychologist at Ben-Gurion University, found that a small fraction (11%) of people in long-term relationships said that they began with love at first sight. In other words, in some couples the initial favorable impressions of attractiveness triggered love which sustained a lengthy bond. It is also clear that some couples need to form their bonds over a longer period, and popular culture tells many tales of friends who become lovers. One might also speculate that if a person is looking for a partner with traits that cannot be quantified instantly, such as compassion, intellect or a good sense of humour, then it would be hard to form a relationship on the basis of love at first sight. Those more concerned only with visual appearances, though, might find this easier. Source: www.economist.com

When Lucille Ball met June Allyson

When June Allyson flew to New York in the winter of 1960, the last person anyone expected her to look up was Lucille Ball. And yet now it seemed that this was the very reason June had come three thousand miles—to see Lucy. Why? What was going on? In a matter of weeks, the answer was obvious. Right after her meeting with Lucy, June suddenly stopped squashing the rumors that all was not well with her marriage to Dick Powell. And early in January 1961, when an openly weeping June told reporters outright that she and Dick had separated and she would seek a divorce, the mystery seemed to be solved. 

June Allyson was faced with the breakup of her marriage. There was only one other woman in the world who had ever been faced with just her unique and difficult position-and that was Lucille Ball. Lucy seemed to be the only person June could turn to for the understanding and advice she needed. Neither woman was willing to comment on what they talked about. But there were no denials either. After their meeting, people were quick to point out that Lucy, having been through the division of Desilu Studios, might well give June some financial advice. After all, June and Dick also shared an entertainment empire, Four Star Productions. June Allyson and Lucille Ball were born, a few years apart, in New York. As children they dreamed of show business careers. Each girl underwent a tragic experience that almost crippled her for life. For June it was an accident. Her spine had been injured. 

For Lucille, it was an illness; she contracted pneumonia. Whether through improper treatment, or simply because of the violence of the attack, it left her paralyzed. For eight months she lay in bed, struggling to move a toe, an ankle, a knee. She had planned to begin her show business career as a chorus girl. Now she was told she might never walk again. Yet neither girl would consider giving up. Shy, delicate-boned, tiny June Allyson, and raucous, wide-mouthed, tall Lucille Ball—they shared an incredible determination. By effort, by sheer will power, they set about restoring themselves to health. For June there were long hours in a swimming pool, to help move her stiff and aching legs. And then there were the movies to help forget. She loved Fred Astaire’s “The Gay Divorcee,” which she watched eighteen times. She knew every step of the dance routines. 

For Lucille, there were exercises that were much the same—and scars that were very different. For three long years she struggled to regain control of her legs. She spent hours listening to the radio, studying the great comedians, their tricks, their timing. The one thing she wanted was to make people laugh. At one point, some relative brought a drama coach to see her, to encourage her gallant fight. At the end of the session the man rose, bit his lip, and told her that she did not have a chance. Sick or well, the man said with pity she simply had no talent. As stubbornly as June Allyson kept her eyes from her face in the mirror, so Lucille Ball kept her thoughts from that man, his condescension and his judgment. Despite him, despite her unwilling legs, she would be a dancer and a famous comedienne. Both women went to the West, to Hollywood, where they would meet each other for the first time during the production of Best Foot Forward. 

Best Foot Forward was a 1943 American musical film adapted from the 1941 Broadway musical comedy of the same title, based on an unpublished play by John Cecil Holm. The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and starred Lucille Ball, William Gaxton, June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven, and Nancy Walker. Produced by George Abbott, the production opened on Broadway on October 1, 1941 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, where it ran for 326 performances. It was directed by Abbott, with choreography by Gene Kelly, and starred Rosemary Lane. The show was Nancy Walker's Broadway debut and also launched June Allyson to fame. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times liked the "good humored" show, especially praising the score and choreography, singling out June Allyson and Nancy Walker. Maureen Cannon (Best Foot Forward) was friendly with Rosemary Lane and June Allyson, and she witnessed in the summer of 1942 the introduction of June Allyson to Dick Powell by mutual friend Rosemary Lane. This clearly would contradict Joan Blondell's madcap account of the meeting in her memoir Center Door Fancy. 

While shooting Meet the People (1944), co-starring Dick Powell, Lucille Ball helped her friend June Allyson to hide her and Dick Powell from the press. Lucille also observed Joan Blondell's erratic conduct and her tendency to spread false rumors about Allyson. Blondell's official divorce from Powell would happen in July 1945. In August, 19, 1945, Dick Powell would marry her third and last wife, June Allyson. After getting nervous in her first wedding night with Powell, Allyson felt more on ease the next day, explaining: "The next morning he took me to the Santana, and there we had our second wedding night in broad daylight. What had I been afraid of? This was truly the gold at the end of the rainbow. I didn't want to get off the boat, ever." This would also contradict Powell's bedroom customs that Joan Blondell mentioned in Center Door Fancy, complaining of a prudish Powell wanting to make love only in the darkness. 

Joan Blondell alleges, in the most libelous passage of Center Door Fancy, that Allyson's reputation was in the public domain and she had been a call-girl in NYC, according to Mike Todd. Blondell mustn't have figured that future biographers of Allyson would confirm or debunk these awful allegations. And multiples sources deny these off-base accusations. First, Mike Todd was a shady, sexist fabulist who only could know about Allyson through third-party sources. As a youngster, June Allyson lived on 3rd Avenue Elevated, also known as Bronx El, on a clanking street of tenements, bars, and hock shops. To help her family, at 16 she was working as a nightclub singer and dancer. It was typical of the era tongue wagging about a young woman in such an environment. Whilst, Lucille Ball studied dance under Martha Graham Dance Company  before Graham asked her to drop the class. “You’re hopeless as a dancer,” Graham told her. “You’re like a quarterback taking up ballet. Perhaps you could find work as a soda jerk.” Reportedly, at 14, Ball wound up in a relationship with 23-year-old Johnny DaVita, who, some authors speculated, ran illegal booze from Canada. In 1928, Lucy began working for Hattie Carnegie as an in-house model. Later Lucy Ball was hired by theatre impresario Earl Carroll for his Vanities Broadway revue, and by Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. for the Rio Rita stage musical. After a stint in Roman Scandals (1933), Lucille Ball moved to Hollywood as a contract player for RKO. 

On March 3, 1960, (one day after filming the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lucille Ball filed papers in Santa Monica Superior Court, claiming married life with Desi Arnaz was "a nightmare" and nothing at all as it appeared on I Love Lucy. On May 4, 1960, they were officially divorced. Both the show and the couple’s marriage ended in 1960. However, until his death in 1986, Arnaz and Ball remained friends and often spoke fondly of each other. Lucille’s marriage had taken place in 1940. June’s in 1945. Lucille chose a temperamental Cuban bandleader, Desi Arnaz, five years younger. June had married a respected, long-established movie star, Dick Powell—thirteen years her senior. At the beginning, there was the strain of being apart.

For June and Dick, enforced separations were not really long or frequent. They were apart only when location shooting was required for either of them, and this seldom meant more than a few weeks. But for Lucy and Desi Arnaz, enforced separations were far more severe. Lucy once estimated that in the early years of their marriage they spent far less than half their time together. In each marriage, the result was one of increased tension. Lucy and Desi’s broke down first in 1944. For June and Dick the first serious split came in 1957, when Dick moved out of their Mandeville Canyon home. In both cases the decision was made by the woman. And in both cases the women changed their minds and decided to reconcile. Both men had a shrewd business sense. Four Star Productions and Desilu became names to be reckoned within the world of TV. But just as strains had emerged from the success of the two women, new tensions appeared born of their husbands’ triumphs. Lucille Ball sold Desilu's stock for 17 million dollars in 1967, which amounts to $130 millions today. 

When Lucille was a young actress, she was known as a wild and rough woman, very unpolished and scrappy and willing to brawl, and she wasn't liked by everyone because she was sassy. Again, like her Stage Door character, she admitted: 'I'm a bitch in the boardroom, a bore in the bedroom and a bear on the toilet, so watch your back!' Lucille Ball clashed with Joan Crawford during the filming of "Lucy & The Lost Star." Not being used to the sitcom format, Crawford was filled with trepidation and turned to alcohol to calm her nerves, which greatly displeased the demanding and perfectionistic Ball. After Crawford failed to perform a Charleston dance routine to Ball's satisfaction, Ball loudly threatened to fire her in front of the entire cast and crew, causing Crawford to flee to her dressing room in tears. There, she uttered the infamous quote: "And they call me a bitch!" It is said that Desi Arnaz and Vanda Barra gave Crawford pep talks which helped get her through the shoot, and the episode became a big hit. 

Lucille Ball could be a comic wisecracker, but Ginger Rogers, Joan Blondell, and Eve Arden did it better. She's very good in The Big Street, but dramas were never going to be her bread and butter. She couldn't sing, she could move well but wasn't a dancer. Once the hair went red and she developed and was allowed to showcase her amazing talent for physical comedy she became a huge star in an emerging new medium. From a respectable but middling career to #1 at age 40. “On the set of The Lucy Show she could be a holy terror,” said one of the technicians who watched Lucy in action. Joan Blondell, who had known Lucy since their starlet days in the 1930s, had become a stage comedienne in middle age. Lucy booked her on the show, then expressed dissatisfaction with the way Blondell read her lines. After one take, her friend Herb Kenwith reported, the director yelled “Cut” and “Lucille pulled an imaginary chain. . . as if flushing an old-fashioned toilet.” Blondell turned away but caught the tailend of the gesture.“ ‘What does that mean,’ she demanded. Lucille said, ‘It means that stunk!’ Joan looked her right in the eye and said, ‘Fuck you, Lucille Ball!’ and left. The studio audience was stunned. You didn’t hear words like that in those days.” Blondell never came back.

Lucille Ball was very conservative and didn't invest in land properties, like a lot of other celebrities. Fred MacMurray made a fortune off of early Hollywood land valued over 60 millions at the end of his life, the same amount that Lucille Ball was worth: $60 million dollars at the time of her death in 1989. Dick Powell had been shrewd with property as well and was one of the founding investment developers of a big leisure complex at Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue that included an ice hockey arena, a bowling alley, stores, and restaurants. Although his workaholic ethic might have given the impression he would have amassed near an equal fortune as MacMurray's, Powell's estate was just valued around 5 million. After their tumultuous honeymoon, Joan Blondell and Dick Powell left New York by train on 17 October, 1936, stopping at the tony South Shore Country Club in Chicago.

Some fans had difficulty separating reality from the movies. Joan Blondell complained bitterly: "People took all that love stuff so literally with Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, who were always playing opposite each other, that several times the fans were actually furious that I took him away from Ruby. When we got married, they thought she should marry him. It didn't bother them one bit that she was married to Al Jolson." Vivian Vance fondly remembered that during the days of the "I Love Lucy", she would regularly go over to Lucille's house at night to henna and perm Lucy's hair. Ann Sothern and Ethel Merman attended these hair sessions too. Merman, Vance and Ball were having a party at Chez Roxbury and getting pretty drunk in the process. Merman announced she had slept with Desi Arnaz when he was appearing in Too Many Girls (1940), before he went to Hollywood and met Lucy. Merman was also having an affair with Sherman Billingsley, owner of the Stork Club, and married William Smith in 1940.

The story took place on the evening after Lucille Ball threw a wedding shower at Desilu studios for Ethel Merman prior to her marriage to Ernest Borgnine, which would put the time in June 1964. "Lucille threw a party for Merman at her Beverly Hills house. Her husband, Gary Morton, and her children Lucie and Desi Jr. were sent away while Lucille Ball, Ethel Merman, and Vivian Vance spent the evening with bottles of scotch. The three ladies reminisced about being young together in Broadway and Hollywood. Ethel Merman had known Vivian Vance for twenty nine years and Lucille a little longer. They had done movies and Broadway together and had just finished filming a two part "Lucy Show" for airing on CBS. The more they drank, the freer everyone's tongues got. Merman admitted to her one night stand with Desi in 1939, which Vivian found hysterical. Lucille was not amused and wondered out loud that Ernest Borgnine "must be great in bed at night because he is nothing to look at in the daylight." Finally, the three dames dissolved into laughter and made coffee." 

After her death, more of Lucille Ball's life story surfaced: her reputation back in Jamestown, NY, the rumors about Lucy being a call girl in NYC, like June Allyson, being both stories by all accounts patently false, byproduct of jealousy. In another girl night, June talked about Lucy having an affair with Pandro Berman, head of RKO. Lucy said she had dated Berman but she fended off Harry Cohn's advances in Columbia. Lucy seemed curious about June and Dick's intimate life, asking if was June satisfied? "I cannot have enough of it," laughed June. 

Lucy just seemed bluntly cranky. She advised June not to "mess with the Rat guys" (Sinatra, Lawford, Dino). Allyson shaked her head in disgust. Changing subject, Lucy said: "No matter how I get dressed up, I always look like the cigarette girl at the Trocadero." She added she wanted to redecorate her Roxbury Drive house. She seemed to dominate her second husband Gary Morton. Only Vivian Vance, Ann Sothern and June Allyson could stand up to Lucy's formidable character. Her friends sometimes heard Lucy snicker: "Goddammit Gary, I said no ice! I can't drink this. Make me another one and remember no ice! It's useless. Oh, and can you get me another pack of Pall Malls from the cupboard? Can you manage to do that? Jesus Christ!" —"If Lucy Ball saw June Allyson, what would she tell her now?" article by Charlotte Dinter for Photoplay magazine (April 1961), "Lucille Ball & Desi Arnaz: They Weren’t Lucy & Ricky" (2020),  and "Affairs, Romances, Feuds" (2023) by Allan Royle

Glamour and Heartbreak in the Golden Age

"In perhaps no other decade did the Hollywood film industry and its product look so different at its conclusion as compared to its beginning" (Ina Hark, American Cinema of the 1930s). At the beginning of 1933, with box office receipts 40 percent of what they had been in 1931 and both RKO and Paramount in receivership, the studios agreed, as they had in the 1920s under Will Hays, to police their films and the onscreen as well as offscreen behavior of their stars. Thus was ushered in the "Age of Order" or the "New Deal," as the "Don'ts and Be Carefuls" of the Hays Code of the 1920s gave way to the "uniform interpretation" of the Production Code in 1934 under the administration of Joseph Breen. If sexuality and violence did not disappear from the American movie screen, both were considerably tamed by the Code. By the summer of 1936, "all of the major studios were running in the black for the first time since 1931", and it was estimated that 80 million people went to the movies every week.' 

But there was a recession in 1937 for Hollywood as for the rest of the country, and the net earnings of the studios fell off 41.6 percent from 1937 to 1938, and another 11.4 percent from 1938 to 1939 - this despite the hyperbolic claims of Will Hays, in the foreword to a 1937 book by Barrett Kiesling called Talking Pictures: How They Are Made, How to Appreciate Them, that on a "strip of film are caught and held the best in art, the best in music, the best in acting, the best in drama, and the best in literature." Leo Rosten wrote in 1941: "Hollywood means movies and movies mean stars. No group in Hollywood receives as much attention as the men and women whose personalities are featured in films and around whom entire movie organizations have been geared." About 80 percent of all actors were the studios' property, thanks to the nonreciprocal "option contract" - complete with a "morality clause" designed to exempt a studio from damage caused by irrecuperably profligate behavior - that gave a studio exclusive rights to command their players "to act, sing, pose, speak or perform in such roles as the producer may designate," if stardom was achieved seven years and more (Kiesling 129; Klaprat 375).

According to Margaret Thorp, there were 17,000 motion picture theaters in the United States in the 1930s; even the smallest towns, "numbering their citizens by the hundreds," had movie theaters. Moreover, "it is in the small town that tastes are most definitely marked," she writes. Foreign stars, like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich (whose popularity abroad was of considerable value until the war shut down overseas markets), fared particularly badly in small-town America. Warner Bros. had Al Jolson, George Arliss, Joan Blondell, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, George Brent, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell, Barbara Stanwyck (until 1935), Bette Davis, Kay Francis, Paul Muni, Humphrey Bogart, Pat O'Brien, Olivia de Havilland, Errol Flynn, Claude Rains, and Ann Sheridan. 

Like screwball comedy, musicals, too, linked stars, especially dancing stars, to competence and entertainment values that were dependent upon beauty and sexual attractiveness. Backstage musicals were popular from 1933 on, when Ruby Keeler's wide-eyed innocence and earnest tap-dancing, supported by crooner Dick Powell and assorted other wisecracking personnel (including Ginger Rogers, whose best was yet to come) and surrounded by Busby Berkeley's extravagant numbers, made 42nd Street truly the "New Deal in Entertainment" that its promotion promised. Margaret Thorp wrote: "No capitalist civilization, measuring success by material possessions, can afford to abandon completely the refreshment of release by identification with an ideal personality, the necessity for escape by dreams." Analogous to its male stars, Warners' women tended to he either tough-talking dames or shrinking violets; on the one hand were Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell, Ruth Donnelly, and later Ann Sheridan, on the other Ruby Keeler, Kay Francis, Anita Louise, and the Lane sisters. 

Dick Powell was considered one of Hollywood's most eligible bachelors after his memorable performance in "Blessed Event." "He always seemed to be in good humor. He gave the impression of always enjoying what he was doing," said his short-time fiancé Mary Brian. Out of the blue, Powell quit his commitment to Brian and fell by the spell of his habitual co-star Joan Blondell. By the time they made Broadway Gondolier, they had already appeared in four movies together. They were first spotted dating in late September of 1935, less than one month after Joan’s divorce from cinematographer George Barnes. On 17 September, they announced that they would be married in two days on the yacht Santa Paula at San Pedro to sail through the Panama Canal. Blondell wrote veiledly about her three husbands in the last chapters of Center Door Fancy. She critizices George Barnes (who started as a still photographer for Thomas H. Ince, the man who died on Hearst' yatch) for being remote and not wanting children. Later, after divorcing him, she finds out he suffered a terrible childhood. The most baffling reproachments against the collected crooner are quite contradictory. For example it's clear she was looking for security with Dick Powell, who was a practical family man. In fact, she leads Jim (Powell) to break up with May Gould (Mary Brian) making him doubt of his feelings. Blondell also expresses doubts to Sally (Glenda Farrell) about her true feelings towards Powell, saying "he's too nice to hurt."

Joan always conceded that Dick made a wonderful father. Such acknowledgment did not stop her from arming herself with lawyers and filing for divorce on 9 June 1944. Joan announced publicly her separation from Dick: “I am going to file against Dick as soon as he returns from the East. . . and after I have talked the matter over with him. The matter of a divorce is final, however.” Norman Powell said in 1996: “My mother said she was taken with the kindness and gentleness that he exhibited toward her, and the fact that he really seemed to love me. I think that’s what attracted her to him more than any other thing.” Once Joan sets her sights on Mike Todd, she proceeds to depicts Powell as "corny, unsure of himself, a cold fish, a cold-assed Don Juan, and surprisingly prudish", adding that "He will make love only in the dark, furtively. I’ve got a new guy, and Jim [Powell] would die of envy if he knew how we feel." Blondell tells her mother: "Mom. It doesn’t matter about the little crumb [June Allyson] who’s after him. I heard their voices on the detectives’ recording, and she’s so corny—pleading with him to marry her, guide her career. It’s like a cheesy B-picture. Doesn’t he know about his Amy? Everybody else does. Her reputation is in the public domain. She’s a tramp dressed like a little kid. She was a call girl in New York—exhibitions her specialty. Flynn, and even a New York doctor, told me they knew some of the guys she ‘entertained.’ She’s using Jim—can’t he see? It would be a giant step for her to get the Star Husband of the Year. You know something crazy? He thinks I don’t know about her. And he doesn’t mention Jeff. We’re both silent.” 

Dick Powell yells after Blondell announces her petition of divorce: “I, Jim Wilson, did not marry a bum!” Blondells writes: "Jim slammed the door shut and was gone. I was sitting up in bed, my lawyer standing by the window. He had been talking to me for over an hour about the division of property and finances. By law, everything we had should be divided, and the lawyer was urging me to use the proof I had against Amy O’Brien to get what was coming to me. I told him I couldn't prove anything. “I’ll sign it, whatever it is—let’s get it over with. I can’t stand the sight of Jim around the house any longer.” Blondell writes that Powell moved to a rented house in Beverly Hills, and Mike Todd many times a day talked to her from New York. Also, Blondell has Frances Marion suggesting that June Allyson slept her way to the top. 

June Allyson wrote in her 1983 memoirs: "Joan's account of this meeting in 'Center Door Fancy', a fictionalized autobiography, is loaded against me. Most of the names have been changed, but the true identities are obvious. Joan is Nora, David is first husband George Barnes, Jim is Dick Powell, Amy is me, Teresa is Marion Davies, and Jeff is Mike Todd. She wrote that I simpered and came down the steps pigeon-toed and cooed that I slept with his letter under my pillow every night. I had no letter. I never wrote a fan letter. I had no picture or letter from him or any star. It was ridiculous, but then, so was her charge that I had stolen her husband away, starting that night. In fact, Richard recorded his own account of our first meeting in his diary, and it differs substantially from Joan's: "Why I bother to put this down I don't know except that she certainly is the cutest thing anybody ever saw. Last night, I went to catch 'Best Foot Forward' and there was this little blonde character named June Allyson who sang so loud that the veins stood out on her neck like garden hose. I sat and guffawed through the whole routine. Really a funny act although I don't know if the producer meant it that way. Anyway, this afternoon I had to attend a formal luncheon and I got stuck with the most stubborn hunk of chicken I've ever had the displeasure of eating. It took all my attention and I was struggling with it until I guess my face turned red. Then, suddenly, I felt someone's eyes on me and I looked up. And there was this same cute little character from the show last night and she was convulsed with laughter. Laughing at me! I don't know whether or not I particularly like that girl, but she sure is cute." Once I called Richard's home, Joan did not seem interested and irritably called his husband to the phone. Then she came back on and said, with biting sarcasm:

"You want my husband? Well, you can have him." Richard was on the phone and I tried to hide my embarrassment as I said, "I've got a script from MGM and they want me to do this picture called 'Two Girls and a Sailor.' Joan Blondell was convinced that I was after her husband. I wasn't, even though Dick Powell gave me palpitations and shortness of breath just to look at him. I tried not to think of him, except as my mentor. Every major actress gets whispered about. With me it was the nymphomaniac thing. "She's not Goody Two Shoes, she's Goody Round Heels," said the malicious rumors.  But the only man who really made my heart flutter was, of course, Dick Powell. And he was determined to protect my reputation." Another time, June writes "Richard was taking me to Ciro's and I was ready. But when he saw me, he was speechless with my new sophisticated look. He slumped on a couch in the living room. He pulled me down on his lap. Richard grabbed me and started smooching. "Whew, you scared me this time," he said. "I'm here because being around you is like being in a fresh breeze. So don't go dramatic on me, right?" "Yes, sir," I said. "Goody Two Shoes reporting for duty." "Let's go," he said. "No, wait a minute." He kissed me again. "Monkeyface, I love you." In 'Center Door Fancy', Joan gave me the name of Amy, possibly after the selfish sister in 'Little Women' who steals Jo's boyfriend and marries him. How bitter she must have been to have written about me: "Doesn't he know about his Amy? Everybody else does. Her reputation is in the public domain. She's a tramp dressed like a little kid. She was a call girl in New York, exhibitions her specialty." I could not believe it. How untrue, and how cruel.

In 1943 Joan Blondell had began going solo to the exclusive Cub Room of the Stork Club, that see-and-be-seen nightclub on East Fifty-third frequented by the café society of Broadway, Hollywood, and Washington. Mike Todd frequented the Stork Club as well. The man was singularly charismatic. He could walk into a room and suck up all the available oxygen with his bear-trap mouth, ubiquitous cigar, and rattling voice. Beat the Band was an incidental moment in an outsized life, except that it offered him an introduction to Dick Powell’s wife. A sort of weariness had settled into Powell and Blondell's marriage as soon as 1941. No longer were they on the town arm in arm. Now they were stepping out separately, offering excuses of family duties or the flu to account for the oft-absent spouse. Dick went alone to see "Best Foot Forward" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre and was taken with sprightly young cast member June Allyson, who sang the praises of the barrelhouse, blues, and boogie-woogie in the “Three B’s” showstopper. Dick went with Joan a second time, and backstage Dick asked Rosemary Lane to be introduced to June Allyson, who was agape that a star of his rank would single her out. In 1961, Allyson and Powell reconciled, went home and made love, after which he said that he would never leave her because "there is a lot of lovemaking but real love like ours is rare." --Sources: "Glamour in a Golden Age: Movie Stars of the 1930s" (2010) by Adrienne L. McLean, "Center Door Fancy" (1972) by Joan Blondell and "June Allyson" (1983) by June Allyson