On contract to MGM for 12 years.
Received a special tribute as part of the Annual Memorial tribute at The 79th Annual Academy Awards (2007) (TV). The film footage showed Miss Allyson on stage at the Academy Awards smiling and laughing.
Separated from Powell once when she fell in love with actor Alan Ladd during filming of The McConnell Story (1955). Ladd was also married at the time.
She had one sibling, a brother named Henry Allyson Geisman, who was born November 22, 1915 in New York, NY and died Jan 6, 1995 in Riverside, CA.
She initially turned down the opportunity to be a celebrity spokesperson for Depends undergarments because "it was not a very pleasant subject". Reportedly, her mother changed her mind because she convinced Allyson that she could actually help people with a very real and widespread problem that they were too embarrassed to talk about with friends or family.
She was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party.
She was a valued resource in preserving information about Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) and Hollywood's golden years. She was a spokesperson on the issue of incontinence, and was instrumental in establishing the June Allyson Foundation for Public Awareness and Medical Research. She and her husband, Dr. David Ashrow, actively supported fund-raising efforts for both the James Stewart and Judy Garland museums. Stewart and Garland were both close friends.
She was just 5' 1" and weighed 99 lbs. in 1945.
Son Dick Powell Jr. born December 24, 1950.
Stepmother of Norman S. Powell and Ellen Powell.
Very seldom was able to break out of her spry "goody two shoes" types. The couple of times she did, however, were extreme. She played a harsh, cold-hearted wife to José Ferrer in The Shrike (1955) who nags him to the point of a nervous breakdown. Audiences would not accept her in the role and the movie failed at the box office. Another time she played a lesbian murderess in They Only Kill Their Masters (1972), one of her final films.
Was a good friend of Judy Garland. They were both under contract at MGM in the 1940s, and Judy used to give June rides in Judy's car to the studio whenever possible. In interviews after Garland's passing, Allyson said that she could hardly talk about Garland without getting tears in her eyes because she was such a special lady who didn't have appropriate help available to her in her lifetime.
When she married Alfred Glenn Maxwell, her family allowance from the estate of Dick Powell was reduced from $5,000 per month to $2,500 per month.
When she was eight years old, she was crushed by a falling tree limb while riding a bicycle. She wore a back brace for four years and taught herself to dance by watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. She was told that the accident would prevent her from having children. Her first child, Pamela Powell, was adopted in 1948. In 1950, however, she gave normal birth to her son, Dick Powell Jr..
Witnessed Joan Crawford's cruel treatment of her daughter Christina Crawford and claims the book and film adaptation Mommie Dearest (1981) are honest accounts of how Joan treated her children.