The Good Old Days

In memoriam - June Allyson

June Allyson is being remembered today as "the perfect wife," the girl next door, the image that comes to mind for some people when they long for the "good old days." But while her screen image was that of mom, apple pie and fresh-faced optimism, her real life wasn't always as sunny.

Her on-screen image is one politicians like Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, and Sam Brownback -- and their cohorts on the religious right like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell -- long for when talking about the good old days. They seem to forget it was just a movie. They want us to return to a time that didn't really exist at that time!

June Allyson is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

She was the daughter of an alcoholic father who left when she was six. Her mother worked as a telephone operator and restaurant cashier trying to make ends meet. When June was eight a dead tree branch fell on her as she was riding her bicycle, breaking several bones. The doctors said she would never walk again. Months of physical therapy helped her to defy that prognosis, but at a cost.

"After the accident and the extensive therapy, we were desperate," Allyson wrote in her autobiography. "Sometimes mother would not eat dinner, and I'd ask her why. She would say she wasn't hungry, but later I realized there was only enough food for one."

Allyson not only walked again, but went on to dance on Broadway and in films. In 1945, Allyson married Dick Powell, the crooner who turned serious actor and then producer-director and television tycoon. The marriage seemed like one of Hollywood's happiest, but it wasn't.

She began earning big money after leaving MGM, "but it had little meaning to me because I never saw the money, and I didn't even ask Richard how much it was . . . It went into a common pot with Richard's money" . . . The couple separated in 1961, but reconciled and remained together until his death in 1963 . . . A few months after Powell's death, Allyson married his barber, Glenn Maxwell. They separated 10 months later, and she sued for divorce, charging he hit her and abused her in front of the children and passed bad checks for gambling debts.

She fought depression and alcoholism, but June Allyson's personal story did have a happy ending. She did ultimately find peace, love and the happiness she brought to others -- but only after surviving what some men in positions of power in this country today refer to as "the good old days."