Actress/singer/dancer June Havoc (born Ellen Hovick) has passed away at the age of 97. She was the baby sister of Gypsy Rose Lee (born Louise Hovick) and a major character in Gypsy.
Her death comes as a surprise as so help me I thought she died a few years ago, but 97 is a good long run. So sing Out Louise- the baby’s coming home.
It would be interesting to read the book Gypsy if written in today’s tell all environment because unlike today (when celebrities need to have been molested or abducted by aliens at very least to have noteworthy memoirs) I’m guessing Gypsy whitewashed their childhood considerably. The real Mama Rose was by all accounts a horror (like the movie she was brass, thrice divorced and had no shame as a stage mother; unlike the movie she was bisexual- the “real” Herbie was a woman who according to Eric Preminger his mother and Aunt June much preferred to their mom- and could get violent. She was later involved in a murder trial at a lesbian boardinghouse! Also the Vaudeville circuit wasn’t known for its strict insistence on celibate acts.
The real June wasn’t quite as young as her musical theater counterpart when she eloped- she was about 15 instead of the 13 in the musical- but it was to legally be out from under the control of her mother. Mama Rose had the marriage annulled, threatening the groom with a gun, but they eloped again the next year and this time stayed away from her. Per Preminger her husband was gay (though this being the 1920s he himself may not have known it yet) and the marriage fell apart after a few months but they remained friends until he died many years later.
Havoc married twice more, had a daughter who was an actress (now deceased) and had a long career on stage with occasional film appearances. She never stripped to my knowledge. She semi-retired in the 1960s and completely retired in the 1980s.
Smile, Baby!
I didn’t realize either that she hadn’t yet shuffled off to Buffalo.
Gypsy was something that I enjoyed with my grandmother, and I read June’s autoboigraphy, along with lots of biographies of vaudevillians.
Godspeed to her.
That’s a shame, though 97 is quite respectable!
I remember her best as the self-hating Jewish secretary in Gentleman’s Agreement – the one who worried that the magazine for which she worked would start to hire “kikey” types and spoil it for the appropriately goyishe-acting employees. Quite a pill, she was. Very well played.
What a life! On top of all that, her NYT obit has her sleeping on bus depot benches and on dance marathon circuits during the Depression. Wow.
And somewhere . . . Louise is singing out.
Enigmatic quote from that obit:
“My sister was beautiful and clever — and ruthless. My mother was endearing and adorable — and lethal. They were the same person. I was the fool of the family. The one who thought I really was loved for me, for myself."
My father had the Book-of-the-Month Club edition of Gypsy and I probably first read it when I was 10 or so. :eek: even toned down as it is. Such a coincidence that June just died as my husband is currently reading Stripping Gypsy, apparently a more truthful version. I’m next in line to read it before it goes back to the library, but I’ve flipped through a few pages.
A few things have struck me with what little I’ve seem: Obviously in 1957 Gypsy couldn’t write about her mother being a lesbian; you could go to jail for that. On the other hand, Gypsy writes that the car she bought from Fanny Brice was a Minerva; apparently it really was a Rolls-Royce. Why would she dissemble about that? Who would care?
I always imagined that “Eddy” was Otto Preminger, knowing that Erik was Preminger’s out-of-wedlock son. The new book tells more about Eddy; he was a married businessman who died at 40. I am very eager to read the new book. I’ve read Gypsy about a dozen times.
June ran this artists colony in Connecticut; I remember going there when I was 10-12 or so and meeting her. She was a really nice person, and even at that time (late 1970s-early 1980s) she was still very attractive. She had a good run, but she’ll be missed.
Erik Preminger told a funny/scary story out the first time he met his grandmother (Mama Rose). His mother was upstairs taking a bath- which was a long drawn out process- when there was a knock on the door and Erik answered. He said a tiny lady, not much bigger than he was (and he was a child) wearing a mink asked to speak to his mother. He asked “Can I tell her who’s calling?” and she said “I’m your grandma darling”.
He went upstairs and told his mother “A little old lady in a mink’s here to see you; she says she’s my grandma.” Per Erik, Gypsy got out of her bathtub (and she rarely interrupted a bath for anything short of a natural disaster) and threw on a robe saying “Oh Jesus… let’s get back down there! Don’t ever leave her alone with the silver and the art!”
However I’ve read that June and Gypsy had a falling out over Gypsy’s book and the musical because June didn’t like the way Rose was depicted. It’s hardly unusual for siblings to perceive their parents differently, but I wonder if it was more of a case of June thinking Rose was a better person than Gypsy did or just a case of not wanting the family dirty laundry aired in public.