June Haver’s Broken Dreams
Though June Haver was supposed to be the next Betty Grable, her Hollywood career took a much different turn. She charmed audiences with her voice and talent in films like The Dolly Sisters, only to have it all fall apart right as she reached her peak. The Golden Age of Hollywood saw many tragic blondes, but June Haver’s story is one of the most tarnished.
20th Century-Fox Production, Wikimedia Commons
1. She Was A Prodigy
June Haver’s talent was obvious from a young age, and she had the family genes to back it up. Born to an actress mother and a musician father, Haver—who took on her stepfather’s last name after her father exited her life—won a contest held by the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music when she was just seven years old. But Haver had her sights set even higher.
Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images
2. She Had A Knack
At eight years old, little June decided to switch it up and presented herself for a film test. While there, she perfectly imitated screen greats like Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Helen Hayes. It was no surprise, then, when she won this too.
At this point, however, Haver’s mother stepped in.
3. She Horrified Her Mother
Although Haver’s mother was an actress herself, she knew how demanding the spotlight could be and was terrified of her daughter’s dreams. So, even as she saw June’s talents first-hand, she forbade her from acting while she was still a child, hoping that if her daughter ever had to face the brutalities of the industry, she would at least do it as an adult. She didn’t get her wish.
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4. She Chased What She Wanted
June Haver never stopped wanting to be on the stage, and never stopped pursuing her goal; as Haver’s sister put it, she was “pretty as a Dresden doll” and “very self-assured”. By the age of 10, she was performing for the musician and radio host Rudy Vallee, becoming famous—even given her mother’s worries—as a child star after all. And she didn’t stop.
Photographer uncredited, Wikimedia Commons
5. She Was A Master Manipulator
A teenage Haver also began working as a band singer, getting paid to sing with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra and other bandleaders of the day. She achieved this her signature way: Through brute force. As she said, “Every time a bandleader came to town, I’d march to his hotel armed with my scrapbook. I’d tell him that he could get a lot of publicity if he would let me sing with his band”.
But by 1942, she made another big leap.
6. She Uprooted Her Life
When June Haver was around 16 years old, she left everything she knew and made her way to Hollywood. She was so determined to make it as a star that she even finished high school in California, all while acting on stage and in various venues, waiting for scouts to notice her. But she didn’t do it alone.
7. It Was A Family Affair
Haver’s mother may not have always been on board with her daughter’s dreams, but June’s career as a starlet would have been impossible without her family. Her sisters Evelyn and Dorothy trailed her to Hollywood, usually acting as her stand-ins, while her mother became her secretary. Then one day, she got lucky.
8. She Got Discovered
While playing a Southern belle character, Haver finally caught the right set of eyes, and 20th Century Fox invited her to sign a $3,500 per-week contract with them. They then quickly deployed her in a small, uncredited role as a hat-check girl in the Carmen Miranda film The Gang’s All Here to test her out—which is when Haver received heartbreaking news.
Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images
9. They Dumped Her
The teenaged Haver, excited at becoming a contract player with Fox, was in for a rude awakening. After reviewing the footage from The Gang’s All Here, the studio decided she looked much too young and dropped her. In their defense, she was still only 16, and had topped out at five feet, two inches in height.
Many girls would have given up at this point, but not June Haver.
Toronto Star Photograph Archive, Wikimedia Commons
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10. She Transformed Herself
Haver wasn’t ready to take no for an answer, diminutive as she might have been. Taking the studio’s feedback on board, she changed up her costume as well as her hairstyle to make herself look more mature. The gambit worked, and Fox ended up re-signing her to their stable of actors. More than that, they had big plans.
11. She Was A “Pocket Grable”
Despite her readily apparent youth, Haver’s beauty was already beyond her years, and she had full features and a sharp jawline that recalled pin-ups like Betty Grable. This wasn’t lost on Fox either, who now planned to shape her into the mould of Grable and their other big bombshell, Alice Faye, even giving Haver the nickname the “pocket Grable”.
That said, all this came at a cost to someone.
12. She Took Over From A Big Star
Intent on transforming Haver into their next glamour girl, Fox unveiled Haver in a supporting role in Home in Indiana, where she turned 17 on set. Then just after wrapping up there, they actually replaced their star Alice Faye—who was refusing to come out of retirement—with Haver in the musical Irish Eyes Are Smiling, where she had a starring role. Then, Haver began dazzling.
Screenshot from Home in Indiana, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (1944)
13. She Was Almost Too Optimistic
Haver had a sunny disposition that audiences could see for miles. Soon, people dubbed her “Hollywood’s sweetest star,” and she could sometimes be so upbeat that her friends would have to tell her to “cheer down, June” when they met her. Luckily for her, her driven optimism fit perfectly into Fox’s world of sun-washed musicals.
And just as Haver’s career was heating up, so too was her personal life.
Screenshot from Home in Indiana, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (1944)
14. She Had An On-Set Romance
Haver followed up Irish Eyes Are Smiling with Where Do We Go From Here alongside established star Fred MacMurray. Although he, like so many men she met, would reappear in Haver’s life much further down the road, it was her next co-star in The Dolly Sisters, Frank Latimore, who struck up a romance with her.
Better yet, both films were a success, and June Haver was on the top of her game. But The Dolly Sisters also brought her face to face with a nemesis.
Screenshot from The Dolly Sisters, 20th Century Fox (1945)
15. She Worked With Her Competition
The Dolly Sisters helped cement June Haver as “the pocket Grable”—in part because one of her co-stars was Betty Grable. In fact, the more seasoned actress actually had the meatier part. It was likely somewhat awkward at first, but despite rumors that the pair were tense on set, Haver said, “I try to be nice to her, and she reciprocated by being just as nice to me”.
Even so, there was a hint of irritation to her next comments.
Screenshot from The Dolly Sisters, 20th Century Fox (1945)
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16. She Denied The Rumors
Although Haver further commented that “It’s silly to think two girls can’t work together without quarreling,” there’s not much indication that Haver and Grable became friends on set, either. Haver indicated that she had to “handle” Grable somewhat, saying “I understand girls pretty well. Betty likes to talk about her baby, so we talk about her baby”.
17. She Got Custom Parts
The mid-1940s brought Haver further success in films like I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, where she reportedly took on a role that was written specifically for her, and which stretched her talents with a complicated dance routine.
Now just entering her 20s, Haver thought she was finally coming into her own…enough to make her first big mistake.
De Carvalho Collection, Getty Images
18. She Met An Old Flame
Around 1947, an old ghost re-entered Haver’s life. After making a trip back home, she reconnected with a trumpeter named Jimmy Zito, whom she’d played with during her Ted Fio Rito Orchestra years. In fact, Haver had once nursed an enormous crush on Zito, and when she returned as an adult actress, he was all too happy to return the favor.
Donaldson Collection, Getty Images
19. She Eloped
With the pair head over heels with each other, they decided to elope in 1947. Haver even converted to Catholicism to marry her teenage love, and hoped this was the beginning of a new life for her, one that would right the wrongs in her own parents’ relationship. Tragically, her illusions shattered almost instantly.
20. Her Husband Was A Stranger
Haver later told the press that, “We hadn’t been married hours before I realized I had never really known Jimmy. He was a stranger”. According to Haver, even during their brief time together Zito displayed intense mood swings, being “either down in the dumps or up high. I never knew from one moment to the next how he would be”.
It took little time to totally fall apart.
21. Her Marriage Imploded
With these incompatibilities, June Haver and Jimmy Zito’s marriage collapsed just three months after their elopement, and a year later they were officially divorced. It was a particularly traumatic outcome for Haver, whose conversion to Catholicism was genuine and who felt the failure of her “forever” keenly; she called it “the biggest mistake of my life”. Still, she didn’t retreat completely into herself.
Screenshot from Home in Indiana, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (1944)
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22. She Had Her Sister’s Back
Around this time, Haver built an apartment complex in Westwood, California for one specific, heartwarming purpose: She had learned her sister had been refused a lease because she had both a child and a puppy, and so she put the struggling family up in her new house instead. More than that, she continued to open her doors to renters who had children.
23. She Played A Broadway Tragedy
June Haver kept working through her heartbreak, starring in films like Look for the Silver Lining, where she played tragic Broadway actress Marilyn Miller. However, she had some help in her rebound: One of the men she dated before she married Zito, studio dentist John Duzik, reignited his courtship and insisted they would be married next.
This wasn’t a mistake, but it was a tragedy.
Bain News Service, publisher, Wikimedia Commons
24. She Fell In Love Again
Duzik was everything Haver was looking for in a husband: Handsome and with his own career, he seemed able to both take care of her and handle her fame. Besides that, she thought she knew him better than she had ever known Jimmy Zito, and was happy to imagine herself walking down the aisle to him. This time, though, fate intervened.
25. Her World Collapsed
In 1949, Duzik went in for surgery and came out on the brink of death; according to one source, he suffered from complications due to his haemophilia. Instead of Duzik taking care of her, Haver now began nursing Duzik in his final days, desperately hoping he would make a recovery and praying often at church for his health. It would amount to nothing.
De Carvalho Collection, Getty Images
26. She Buried Her Fiance
On Halloween Day of 1949, Duzik perished at last, and Haver once more had nothing to hold on to except her still-burgeoning career. Desperate for direction, she even traveled to Rome and won an audience with the Pope, seeking his spiritual guidance in the midst of her mourning.
For all that, she returned to America wrung out.
27. Her Dreams Faded
Although Haver kept working, acting in films like I’ll Get By in 1950—where she reprised an earlier role Betty Grable had played—and Love Nest in 1951, she slowly realized that her parts no longer thrilled her, for all that she had worked so hard in her youth to get them. To add insult to injury, no man she dated could hold her interest either, and her entire life seemed meaningless.
Her disillusionment led her to an almost unbelievable choice.
Screenshot from I’ll Get By, 20th Century Fox (1950)
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28. She Became a Nun
While June Haver was rightly famous for her film roles, her next decision remains her most infamous. In February of 1953, not long after wrapping the film The Girl Next Door, Haver entered into the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth in Kansas to become a postulant nun. Yes, the “pocket Grable,” the blossoming bombshell, became a Kansas nun.
But there were more disturbing reasons for her decision.
Screenshot from The Girl Next Door, 20th Century Fox (1953)
29. Her Studio Dismissed Her
Although Haver was heartsick from her broken marriage and then her broken engagement when she entered the convent, she had other reasons to dislike Hollywood and her life at the time. Indeed, Fox’s approach to her had grown distinctly chilly: They were showing her fewer scripts, few of them very good, and she was getting diminishing returns on the roles she was taking.
It’s no wonder, then, that Haver started to dislike acting. But that wasn’t all.
Screenshot from The Girl Next Door, 20th Century Fox (1953)
30. She Had A Terrifying Accident
Hollywood was also becoming dangerous for June Haver. Indeed, her decision to enter the convent may have been partially driven by a brutal accident on set: While working on her last film, The Girl Next Door, she missed a leap during a dance routine and suffered a concussion. If other factors weren’t enough to drive her to a nunnery, this may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
In a twist of fate, however, it wasn’t the last she would see of Hollywood.
Screenshot from The Girl Next Door, 20th Century Fox (1953)
31. She Didn’t Make It As A Nun
In an alternate universe, June Haver’s story might have ended there, with the one-time glamour girl living out the rest of her days quietly in a convent. But just months after deciding to enter into the religious life, more bad luck struck. Haver fell seriously ill, enough that she had to leave the nuns and go back into the world.
As always, fate’s plans kept dragging her back into the spotlight.
Screenshot from The Girl Next Door, 20th Century Fox (1953)
32. She Had Celebrity Friends
Shortly after leaving the convent, Haver was still trying to stay away from Hollywood and took up interior decorating rather than going back to the screen. Nonetheless, many of her friends were still in the entertainment business, and she soon found herself invited to John Wayne’s “Naughty Nineties” costume party. Though she was reluctant to go, it would change her life.
Pictorial Parade, Getty Images
33. She Met A New Man
While at John Wayne’s bash, June Haver ran into Fred MacMurray, her old co-star from Where Do We Go From Here. It had been years since they had last worked together, but Haver always did have a weak spot for old acquaintances. Before the night ended, she and MacMurray hit it off and left the party together.
As it happened, this was scandalous.
Screenshot from Where Do We Go From Here, 20th Century Fox (1945)
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34. She Had A Spicy Love Interest
Not only was MacMurray 18 years Haver’s senior and a much more established star having won fame in the noir Double Indemnity, but he was also very newly widowed. His first wife Lillian Lamont had suffered numerous health issues before passing in June of 1953, just months before MacMurray and Haver kindled a romance, and while Haver herself was busily posted in a convent.
Over the next months, then, the two of them had to play it very carefully.
Whitey Schafer, Wikimedia Commons
35. They Kept It A Secret
Haver and MacMurray kept their relationship under wraps until an appropriate amount of mourning time had passed for Lamont, then announced their intention to marry. In the meantime, Haver pursued and won an annulment for her ill-fated union with Jimmy Zito, allowing them to marry in her beloved Catholic Church.
Though everything was now in place, MacMurray’s choice of proposal was somewhat eccentric.
36. He Proposed In An Odd Way
For an engagement ring, MacMurray bought the actor Red Skelton’s good luck pinky ring and presented it to Haver. To add to the quirkiness of their engagement, MacMurray also casually proposed to the actress after a very unromantic errand to the drug store.
Still, none of this seemed to deter Haver. In fact, they literally couldn’t wait to get married.
Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images
37.They Surprised The Press
Haver and MacMurray announced that their wedding would take place in the first week of August, 1954, but they didn’t keep their promise. To the shock of both friends and journalists, they actually eloped about a month earlier than that, on June 28, to get ahead of the publicity. Then, true to their low-key relationship, MacMurray finished up working on his film The Far Horizons during their honeymoon in Wyoming.
But this didn’t mean the marriage was without complications.
38. She Inherited a Family
June Haver had finally found a proper husband in Fred MacMurray, but she also had to work for her happiness. For one, adjusting into his life was no simple task: MacMurray had two young adopted children, Susan and Robert, with his first wife, and Haver was now their stepmother and main caretaker. Then there was MacMurray himself.
Donaldson Collection, Getty Images
39. Her Husband Was A Difficult Man
MacMurray had a reputation in Hollywood for being something of a hardliner, and he could be a frustratingly rigid, coldly rational man. He and his first wife had once gone through a “test engagement” to make sure they were doing the right sensible thing, and MacMurray infamously pinched pennies as if he were a pauper and not one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.
Soon, Haver found herself clashing with his habits.
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40. He Was Stubborn
The adjustment period for MacMurray and Haver was rough, with Haver later admitting,
“When I married Fred, he was terribly set in his ways…just about as set in his ways as a man can get”.
Nonetheless, Haver was determined to see this through, and she stuck with him through the transition. But when it came to getting what she wanted, there were more problems.
CBS Television, Wikimedia Commons
41. She Made One Request
Haver was desperate to have children with MacMurray, but her new husband was dead-set against the idea. In particular, Haver wanted to adopt another child, a girl, and endured continual refusals from MacMurray, who was already a father and felt too old for a new baby. But in this, it was Haver’s iron will that won out.
42. She Always Got What She Wanted
Eventually, MacMurray and Haver adopted not one, but two daughters, and at the same time: They picked up fraternal twins Laurie Ann and Katie Marie “right out of the incubator,” turning their family of four into a family of six overnight.
Just as Haver’s home life was changing, her professional life underwent an enormous transformation too.
43. She Lost Her Fire
Haver quit Hollywood before meeting MacMurray, and her marriage didn’t tempt her back into the spotlight. Although she did make one last appearance as herself in the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour in 1958, she stated that she “lost it all” in terms of her desire to act. Instead, she now much preferred to stay home and take care of her children.
Her husband’s reaction to this may surprise some.
Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images
44. Her Husband Supported Her
Although MacMurray had conservative values, he claimed that he would have been perfectly fine if Haver wanted to be a working mother. As he said, “I’d hate to be the one to keep her off the screen…the decision is up to her. I’d rather have her at home, but if she wants to make a picture, it’s okay with me”.
45. She Watched From The Sidelines
Despite MacMurray’s “notorious frugality,” the couple lived a happy, comfortable life over the next decades. It was even still a famous one: June was right by her husband’s side when MacMurray starred in the much-acclaimed television show My Three Sons, which ran for an incredible 12 years.
But all good things eventually do come to an end.
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46. She Had A Medical Scare
Haver’s marriage to MacMurray was long-lasting, and it truly encompassed both sickness and health. MacMurray, a lifelong smoker, underwent treatment for throat cancer in the 1970s, only to have it recur in the late 80s. Around the same time as this second diagnosis, he also had a stroke that paralyzed his right side, with Haver supporting him every step of the way.
And still, it wasn’t what took him from Haver.
ABC Television, Wikimedia Commons
47. She Said Goodbye
After decades of illness, MacMurray’s body finally gave out, and to yet another ailment. The actor suffered from leukemia for years, weakening his immune system until he passed from pneumonia in November 1991 at the age of 83.
Haver, still just in her mid-60s, remained devoted as ever, and took care of the ranch they owned together after his passing.
Michael Ochs Archives, Getty Images
48. She Suffered Long-Term Consequences
While MacMurray and his first wife Lillian Lamont adopted children because of Lamont’s recurring health issues, some might wonder why he and Haver adopted as well. The answer is tragic and mysterious: In 1954, MacMurray stated that “June had a serious operation after she fell at Fox Studios a couple of years ago” and wasn’t “sure if she will be able to have children”.
Whether this operation came after her fall and concussion in The Girl Next Door, and how it affected her fertility, is unclear.
49. A New Star Overshadowed Her
While wrapping up her film career, June Haver had a jealousy-inducing brush with future stardom. Though Haver had a starring role in her second-last film, 1951’s Love Nest, the publicity focused on another actress entirely. Marilyn Monroe had a very small part in the movie, and after she became a huge draw, Love Nest upped her title billing and even blew up her face on the poster design, all but leaving Haver in the dust.
Donaldson Collection, Getty Images
50. She Left A Legacy
June Haver achieved stardom on her own terms, and she left Hollywood with just as much decisiveness, living as full a life behind the scenes as she did in front of the camera. In 2005, at the age of 79, she passed from respiratory failure and is now buried alongside Fred MacMurray in Culver City’s Holy Cross Cemetery.
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