June Allyson passes away this week at the age of 88
I doubt whether any of you, regardless of your love of old movies, could tell me the name of the biggest box-office attraction of 1955. I know it puzzled me.
Brando, the obvious guess, was my first one, the chameleon-like lunk whose half palooka-half pretty boy persona was then mesmerizing the nation. Then, I turned to the next obvious: James Dean, bringing Freud and Stanislavsky to millions of paying Baby Boomers at the time in Rebel Without A Cause Finally, my last try: the other James - Stewart, deftly alternating Westerns, big name biographies, and high-concept Hitchcock throughout the 50s.
Well, I was getting warmer.
The answer is Stewart's co-star in a number of those films, June Allyson, who passed away this week at the age of 88.
If she slips through the cracks of our movie consciousness a little too easily, which, given her distinct features - her raspy voice, round face and bright eyes -she shouldn't, it's an injustice attributable to a number of factors.
For one, June Allyson was too light to take seriously and too serious to take lightly. In other words, while we can't entirely forget her, we can't pick up her petite figure up and place her atop the Barbara Stanwyck-Bette Davis-Joan Crawford pedestal either.
And unlike those particular ladies of the screen, one can't make a case for Allyson as a pre-liberation icon of feminism. Her onscreen suffering was certainly not attributable to the agony of being forced to live in man's world, as Stanwyck's of ten was; nor did her roles ever call for her to boldly, sometimes chillingly, snub conformity, like Davis and Crawford's.
No, June, in fact, was the very opposite: the ideal post-war wife - the last to enjoy primo box office success portraying the type.
When her man, usually the aforementioned James Stewart, suffered, she suffered right along with him. When he was happy, so was she. And when it looked like he might turn inward from the world forever, she was there to inspire him to embrace it as never before.
One hopes, in reading the many bios that have inevitably flourished in the wake of her death, that this ability to find personal happiness by supporting and energizing others came naturally to her, as her life was rife with complicated characters.
It was certainly in demand by the moviegoers of the 40s and 50s, and will not doubt continue to hold its appeal.
