June and Gypsy

When actress June Havoc died a few weeks ago at age 97, an era truly ended.

End-of-an-era labels are easily applied without justification, but this case is different. June’s long career began in vaudeville, and she was one of the few remaining performers who could make that claim. But there are other reasons that make her end-of-an-era label spot on.

Born Ellen Evangeline Horvik in Vancouver, British Columbia, she was the apple of her mother’s eye — and the root of her stage mom’s hopes for success in vaudeville. Ellen/June actually was American, her mother, Rose Thompson, having married a Swedish American named John Olaf Horvik. When Rose divorced John, it was Ellen as a child vaudeville star who, along with a sister named Rose Louise, kept income flowing for the struggling family. Ellen’s stage name was “Baby June.” The “June” stuck even after she fled her stage mother’s overbearing presence in 1928, when she was about 15.

Rose Louise, called Louise in the family, took over the “baby” franchise, which she soon outgrew. Mama Rose’s hopes could have been dashed right then, as vaudeville was in its death throes. But vaudeville was being superceded by burlesque, and it was there that Rose Louise blossomed — as Gypsy Rose Lee, the iconic stripper.

June and Gypsy’s story was immortalized in the hit stage musical Gypsy, which premiered on Broadway in 1959. It featured a book by Arthur Laurents, music by Jule Styne, and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, based on Gypsy’s own 1957 self-titled memoir. Gypsy’s was the flashier story — especially with the titillation of her having been a striptease artist — and she could write it. (She also wrote mystery novels, notably The G-String Murders; I have a copy on my bookshelf.) But June’s career post-vaudeville was not without note.

As June Havoc, Ellen Horvik gained a measure of fame on Broadway in shows such as Sigmund Romberg’s Forbidden Melody in 1936 and later Rogers and Hart’s Pal Joey. In the Forties she moved to Hollywood, where she starred in Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947, see photo) and other films, continuing to play various roles well into old age, and well after her more famous sister, Gypsy, had died in 1970 at age 59.

June Havoc’s long life and career was a quintessential Hollywood tale — an overbearing mother, a more-famous sister, and a somewhat tawdry undercurrent of marriages and divorces, all overlaid by the sequin-studded success of show biz. June even wrote about it herself, a couple of times. Predictably, she used her first memoir, Early Havoc, as the basis for a stage play of her own, Marathon ’33, which played briefly on Broadway, starring Julie Harris.