June Havoc (born Ellen Evangeline Hovick; November 8, 1912 – March 28, 2010) was a Canadian-born American actress, dancer, stage director and memoirist.
Havoc was a child vaudeville performer under the tutelage of her mother Rose Thompson Hovick, born Rose Evangeline Thompson. June later acted on Broadway and in Hollywood, and stage-directed, both on and off-Broadway. She last acted on television in 1990 in a story arc on the soap opera General Hospital, and she last appeared on television as herself in interviews in the "Vaudeville" episode of American Masters in 1997 and in "The Rodgers & Hart: Thou Swell, Thou Witty" episode of Great Performances in 1999. Her elder sister Louise gravitated to burlesque and became the well-known striptease performer Gypsy Rose Lee.
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Early life
Ellen Evangeline Hovick was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on November 8, 1912. For many years 1916 was cited as her year of birth. Havoc acknowledged in her later years that 1912 was likely the correct year. She was reportedly uncertain of the year. Her mother forged various birth certificates for both her daughters to evade child labor laws. Her life-long career in show business began when she was a child, billed as "Baby June."
Her sister, entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee (born as Rose Louise Hovick), was called "Louise" by her family members. Their parents were Rose Thompson Hovick, of German descent, and John ("Jack") Olaf Hovick, the son of Norwegian immigrants, who worked as an advertising agent and reporter for the Seattle Times newspaper.
Career
Vaudeville
Following their parents' divorce, the two sisters earned the family's income by appearing in vaudeville, where June's talent often overshadowed Louise's. Baby June got an audition with Alexander Pantages, who had come to Seattle, Washington in 1902 to build theaters up and down the west coast of the United States. Soon, she was launched in vaudeville and also appeared in Hollywood movies. She could not speak until the age of three, but the films were all silent. She would cry for the cameras when her mother told her that the family's dog had died.
In December 1928, Havoc, in an effort to escape her overbearing mother, eloped with Bobby Reed, a young boy dancer in the vaudeville act. Weeks later after they performed at the Jayhawk Theatre in Topeka, Kansas, on December 29, 1928, June's mother, Rose, reported Reed to the Topeka Police, and he was arrested. Rose pulled out a concealed gun when she met Bobby at the police station, intending to shoot him, but the gun did not fire because the safety was on. She then physically attacked her son-in-law, and the police had to pry her off the hapless Reed. June subsequently left both her family and the act. Though the marriage didn't last long, the two remained friends.
Film and stage
She adopted the surname Havoc, a variant of her birth name. In 1936, Havoc got her first part on Broadway in the Sigmund Romberg operetta Forbidden Melody. In 1940, she gave a show-stopping performance as Gladys Bumps in the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, with Gene Kelly in the lead role and Van Johnson, who was in the chorus, along with future film director Stanley Donen. Based on their success, Havoc, Johnson and Kelly were beckoned by Hollywood. Havoc made her first film in 1942 and began to alternate film roles with returns to the Broadway stage. From 1942 to 1944, Havoc appeared in 11 films, including My Sister Eileen with Rosalind Russell, and No Time for Love with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray. She then returned to Broadway in the 1943–44 season, co-starring with Bobby Clark in the Cole Porter musical Mexican Hayride (musical), for which she received the Donaldson Award for best performance by an actress in a supporting role in a musical.
In 1944, Ethel Merman was tapped to star as the title character in the musical play Sadie Thompson, with a score by Vernon Duke and Howard Dietz, directed and produced by Rouben Mamoulian. The musical play was based on the short story Rain by W. Somerset Maugham. The serious production was a departure from Merman’s string of successful musical comedies. Moreover, during rehearsals, Merman had difficulties memorizing the lyrics, and she blamed Dietz for his use of sophisticated and foreign words. She had her husband, newspaper promotion director Bob Levitt, tone down some of the lyrics. Dietz took exception to Merman’s singing the altered lyrics and gave her an ultimatum to sing his original lyrics or leave the show. In response, Merman withdrew from the production. (Some have since speculated that Merman's departure was probably due to her reluctance to assume such a serious role in her first dramatic musical.)
Havoc left her starring role in Mexican Hayride, and assumed the role written for Merman. The production of Sadie Thompson had a difficult out-of-town tryout with songs being deleted and other songs added. Indeed, even after the Broadway opening, musical numbers continued to be cut and other numbers added. Sadie Thompson opened on Broadway on November 16, 1944, to mixed reviews. Havoc received almost uniformly favorable reviews. She was called the “most enjoyable asset” of the show and praised for the “consummate skill of her artistry.” Her performance was described as “surprisingly effective“ and “truly touching,” and she was deemed a “worthy successor” to Jeanne Eagels, who had famously first portrayed the role on Broadway in the play Rain. The score and the book received mixed reviews, with the score called “undistinguished.” However, one reviewer compared the show favorably to Oklahoma!, which Mamoulian had also directed. Nonetheless, the show lasted only 60 performances and closed on January 6, 1945. In 1945, Havoc was featured in the film Brewster's Millions, and starred in The Ryan Girl on Broadway.
Television and radio
Havoc performed intermittently on the radio in the 1940s and early 1950s. Her performances ranged from full-length plays, such as Golden Boy on the prestigious Theater Guild on the Air and Skylark on NBC Best Plays, to the more popular mystery program Suspense. Under the pseudonym Armana Fargey, she also appeared on episodes of The Adventures of Sam Spade and Suspense.
In the 1950s, Havoc was a frequent performer on anthology television series, both filmed, such as General Electric Theater, and live, such as the Peabody Award-winning Celanese Theatre, the Emmy Award-winning Robert Montgomery Presents and Omnibus. She starred in a weekly half hour series Willy during the 1954–1955 television season. In some respects, the show was ahead of its time in that Havoc's character, Willa “Willy” Dodger, was an unmarried lawyer with her own legal practice in a small New England town. Lucille Ball had encouraged her to star in a weekly series, and the show was a Desilu production. Like I Love Lucy, Willy was filmed before a live studio audience. Her husband, William Spier, was the producer. Willy was broadcast on CBS at 10:30 p.m. on Saturdays opposite the popular NBC series, Your Hit Parade. Midway through the season, an attempt was made to increase ratings by having Havoc's character relocate to New York to represent show business clients; however, the show lasted only one season.
From the 1960s through 1990, Havoc appeared occasionally on such successful television series as The Untouchables; Murder, She Wrote; McMillan & Wife; The Paper Chase; and The Outer Limits, as well as an arc on the popular soap opera General Hospital.
Personal life
Havoc was married three times. Her first marriage, at age 16, was in December 1928 to Bobby Reed, a boy dancer in her vaudeville act. Her second marriage was to Donald S. Gibbs in 1936; they divorced in December 1942. Her third marriage, to radio and television director and producer William Spier, lasted from January 25, 1948 until his death in 1973. Havoc's sister Gypsy Rose Lee died of lung cancer in 1970, aged 59, and is interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. June's only child was a daughter, April Rose Hyde, born April 2, 1932. A marriage license, dated November 30, 1928 for Ellen Hovick and Weldon Hyde would seem to indicate that Bobby Reed's real name was Weldon Hyde. However, in her second memoir More Havoc, Havoc admitted that her daughter's father was Jamie Smythe, a marathon dance promoter. This suggestion seems credible since she had separated from her first husband before she entered her first marathon dance contest in 1933. April became an actress known as April Kent in the 1950s, appearing in such films as The Incredible Shrinking Man and Tammy and the Bachelor. April pre-deceased her mother, dying in the Paris suburb of Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis on December 28, 1998, at the age of 66.
In 1947, Havoc was a member of the Committee for the First Amendment (“the FAC”), founded by Philip Dunne, Myrna Loy, John Huston and William Wyler, to support freedom of speech in the film industry during the hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee (''HUAC'') . HUAC was conducting an investigation of Communist infiltration of the film industry prompted in part by the films Crossfire and Gentleman's Agreement, in which antisemitism was a focal point. Havoc had played the supporting role of a secretary who is Jewish but also expresses anti-Semitic sentiments in the latter film. On October 26, Havoc boarded a chartered plane with 22 other FAC members, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Danny Kaye, to Washington, D.C. to protest and attend the second week of hearings. The FAC also sponsored two network radio broadcasts, Hollywood Fights Back, on October 26, and November 2, 1947, in which Havoc and 44 other members voiced their opposition to the HUAC hearings and the existence of the committee itself.
The FAC members, including Havoc, walked to the Capitol and attended the October 27 hearing. The members were escorted past empty seats to the back of the hearing room where Rep. J. Parnell Thomas, the HUAC chairman, had reserved seats for them. They were treated to a raucous confrontation between Thomas and the subpoenaed witness, screenwriter John Howard Lawson. Lawson refused to answer whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party and was held in contempt; evidence, including Lawson’s Communist party membership card, was then introduced. Although the FAC members had planned to attend only one day of the hearings, they stayed a second day before returning to Los Angeles. On October 30, Thomas abruptly ended the hearings without calling several subpoenaed witnesses to the relief of the film industry. However, he threatened to reconvene the hearings. Moreover, the committee had held 10 screenwriters and directors in contempt and introduced their Communist Party membership cards into evidence. Moreover, the FAC members’ trip to Congress proved to be a public relations fiasco. The general public perceived the FAC members as supporting the proven Communist Party members, not their freedom of speech. As a result, movie box office receipts dropped 20%, and even established stars like Bogart were compelled to make public apologies. It is unknown whether Havoc’s film career was affected. However, the fact that she had prominent roles in three films in 1948 and three films in 1949 would suggest otherwise. One of her 1948 films was The Iron Curtain, which was an anti-communist movie produced by Daryl F. Zanuck in response to Thomas’ claims that Hollywood did not produce such films.
Death
Havoc died at her home in Stamford, Connecticut, on March 28, 2010, from unspecified natural causes. She was believed to be 97 at the time of her death.
Honors
Havoc received the Donaldson Award for best supporting actress in a musical comedy (Mexican Hayride) in the 1943–1944 Broadway season.
In 1960, Havoc was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame—one at 6618 Hollywood Boulevard for her contributions to the motion picture industry, and the other at 6413 Hollywood Boulevard for television.
Havoc was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play in 1964 for Marathon '33, which she wrote.
In 1971, Havoc received a Humanitarian Award from Bridgeport University, Bridgeport, Connecticut.
For her performance in Habeas Corpus, Havoc was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for best supporting actress in a play for the 1975–76 Broadway season.
In 2000, Havoc was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
Legacy
The June Havoc Theatre, housed at the Abingdon Theatre in New York City, was named for her in 2003.
Havoc was the first American woman nominated for a Tony Award for direction of a play.
In his autobiography Original Story, Arthur Laurents reports that June Havoc refused to sign a release for any claim regarding the content of the musical Gypsy. Havoc demanded that his script state that she was age 13 when she left the vaudeville act and eloped with one of the dancers. Laurents explains that he objected to Havoc's demand because the audience would lose any sympathy for the character of her mother Rose. He indicates that, while the musical was in tryouts out of town, he altered the script, changing the name of Havoc's character from Dainty June to Dainty Claire. He states that as a result, Havoc signed the release, and her character's name was restored to Dainty June.
In her one-woman show, Elaine Stritch at Liberty, Elaine Stritch recalled that after the closing of the play Time of the Barracudas on the West Coast, she returned to New York and landed a leading role in the play Oh Glorious Tintinnabulation. Stritch recounted that the play was written and directed by June Havoc and scheduled for performance at the Lincoln Center Theater. According to Stritch, during dress rehearsal, Havoc told Stritch that "it just wasn't working out." Stritch added that she went home and that Havoc assumed the role she had been playing. She noted that this incident resulted in an article by Lee Israel, in which Stritch criticized directors, published in The New York Times, which led to her casting in the musical Company.
Havoc's papers are held in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, and a 28-page inventory is accessible online.
Selected stage work
(All shows on Broadway unless indicated otherwise.)