June Allyson

June Allyson (born Eleanor Geisman; October 7, 1917 – July 8, 2006) was an American stage, film, and television actress.

In April 1918 (when Allyson was six months old), her alcoholic father, who had worked as a janitor, abandoned the family.

Allyson was brought up in near poverty, living with her maternal grandparents.

To make ends meet, her mother worked as a telephone operator and restaurant cashier.

When she had enough funds, she occasionally reunited with her daughter, but more often Allyson was "farmed" to her grandparents or other relatives.

In 1925 (when Allyson was eight), a tree branch fell on her while she was riding her tricycle with her pet terrier in tow.

Allyson sustained a fractured skull and broken back, and her dog was killed.

Her doctors said she never would walk again and confined her to a heavy steel brace from neck to hips for four years.

She ultimately regained her health, but when Allyson had become famous, she was terrified that people would discover her background from the "tenement side of New York City", and she readily agreed to studio tales of a "rosy life", including a concocted story that she underwent months of swimming exercises in rehabilitation to emerge as a star swimmer.

In her later memoirs, Allyson describes a summer program of swimming that did help her recovery.

After gradually progressing from a wheelchair to crutches to braces, Allyson's true escape from her impoverished life was to go to the cinema, where she was enraptured by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies.

As a teen, Allyson memorized the trademark dance routines of Ginger Rogers.

She claimed later to have watched The Gay Divorcee 17 times.

She also tried to emulate the singing styles of movie stars, but never mastered reading music.

When her mother remarried and the family was reunited with a more stable financial standing, Allyson was enrolled in the Ned Wayburn Dancing Academy and began to enter dance competitions with the stage name of Elaine Peters.

With the death of her stepfather and a bleak future ahead, she left high school midway through her junior year to seek jobs as a dancer.

Her first $60-a-week job was as a tap dancer at the Lido Club in Montreal.

Returning to New York City, she found work as an actress in movie short subjects filmed by Educational Pictures at its Astoria, Queens NY studio.

Fiercely ambitious, Allyson tried her hand at modeling, but to her consternation became the "sad-looking before part" in a before-and-after bathing suit magazine ad.

Her first career break came when Educational cast her as an ingenue opposite singer Lee Sullivan, comic dancers Herman Timberg, Jr., and Pat Rooney, Jr., and future comedy star Danny Kaye in a series of shorts.

Allyson began her career in 1937 as a dancer in short subject films and on Broadway in 1938.

Allyson's "girl next door" image was solidified during the mid-1940s when she was paired with actor Van Johnson in six films.

She signed with MGM in 1943, and rose to fame the following year in Two Girls and a Sailor.

In 1951, she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance in Too Young to Kiss.

From 1959 to 1961, she hosted and occasionally starred in her own anthology series, The DuPont Show with June Allyson, which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1961.

In the 1970s, she returned to the stage starring in Forty Carats and No, No, Nanette.

During the 1980s, Allyson also became a spokesperson for Depend undergarments, in a successful marketing campaign that has been credited in reducing the social stigma of incontinence.

In 1982, Allyson released her autobiography June Allyson by June Allyson, and continued her career with guest starring roles on television and occasional film appearances.

She later established the June Allyson Foundation for Public Awareness and Medical Research and worked to raise money for research for urological and gynecological diseases affecting senior citizens.

She made her final onscreen appearance in 2001.

Allyson was married four times (to three husbands) and had two children with her first husband, Dick Powell.

She died of respiratory failure and bronchitis in July 2006 at the age of 88.

Allyson was born Eleanor Geisman, nicknamed Ella, in The Bronx, New York City.

She was the daughter of Clara (née Provost) and Robert Geisman.

She had a brother, Henry, who was two years older.

She said she had been raised as a Catholic, but a discrepancy exists relating to her early life, and her studio biography was often the source of the confusion.

Her paternal grandparents, Harry Geisman and Anna Hafner, were immigrants from Germany although Allyson claimed her last name was originally "Van Geisman", and was of Dutch origin.

Studio biographies listed her as Jan Allyson born to Franco-English parents.

Upon her death, her daughter said Allyson was born "Eleanor Geisman to a French mother and Dutch father."

In an interview with Larry King Allyson denied being of German Jewish descent.