June Haver (actress): Her blonde hair, blue eyes, peaches-and-cream complexion, appealing figure, and ability to sing and dance made Haver ideal star material at 20th Century Fox in the 1940s.
- June Haver (actress): One of the studio era’s Fox Blondes, Haver became a musical star in the mid-1940s, almost invariably cast in roles that showcased her peaches-and-cream beauty, sensuous figure, and singing and dancing abilities.
- In the early 1950s, June Haver briefly left Hollywood to join the Sisters of Charity at Leavenworth, Kansas. After her return, she married Fred MacMurray and retired from films.
- Birth: June Haver was born Beverly June Stovenour on June 10, 1926, in Rock Island, Illinois, United States. (She later took on the surname Haver from her stepfather.) Death: She died at age 79 on July 4, 2005, in the Los Angeles suburb of Brentwood, California, United States.
- June Haver movies: Initially seen as 20th Century Fox’s “threat” to its top box office draw Betty Grable, Haver was mostly cast in light color musicals. Titles include Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Three Little Girls in Blue, I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, and, starring opposite Grable, the blockbuster The Dolly Sisters. (See “June Haver filmography” further below.)
June Haver (actress): One of the Fox Blondes, peaches-and-cream musical star briefly became a postulant nun and retired from films in the early 1950s
One of the studio era’s 20th Century Fox Blondes,[1] June Haver graced the screen in about a dozen inconsequential color musicals, in addition to a handful of light comedy-dramas, from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s.
During that time, Haver’s “all-American” beauty – light blond hair, blue eyes, peaches-and-cream complexion, shapely legs, sensuous curves – could be appreciated in titles like Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Three Little Girls in Blue, Wake Up and Live, Look for the Silver Lining (on loan to Warner Bros.), and the sizable commercial hit The Dolly Sisters, in which Haver was paired with Betty Grable, Fox’s (and possibly Hollywood’s) top female box office draw of the 1940s.
Also of note, in the early 1950s Haver quit Hollywood to join the Sisters of Charity at Leavenworth, a Catholic religious institute based in Kansas. Less than a year later she was out, but movies no longer interested her. She married fellow actor Fred MacMurray and retired from the screen.
Below is a brief overview of June Haver’s film career.
Meteoric rise
June Haver’s show business career began while she was still a child. She sang on the radio and attended the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. As a – dark-haired – teenager, she performed with bandleaders Dick Jurgens and Freddy Martin, and was a vocalist with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra.
Not long after the United States entered World War II, Haver and her family moved to the Los Angeles area, where she finished high school and acted with local theater groups. That led to her being spotted by a 20th Century Fox talent scout, which in turn resulted in a reported $75-a-week contract.
At first, the studio placed her in bits in a couple of color musicals: Busby Berkeley’s The Gang’s All Here (1943), starring Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda, and Lewis Seiler’s Something for the Boys (1944), starring Miranda and Vivian Blaine.
But Haver’s ascendancy at Fox would best be described as meteoric. Now a full-fledged blonde, she landed major roles in two 1944 Technicolor releases:
- Cri-Cri, the more voluptuous of two teenage girls (darker-haired Jeanne Crain, who also had a bit in The Gang’s All Here, was the other one) in the life of a horse-loving Midwestern boy (Lon McCallister) in Henry Hathaway’s surprisingly effective pastoral comedy-drama Home in Indiana.
- Mary “Irish” O’Neill (replacing Vivian Blaine and a pregnant Alice Faye), the former hatcheck girl who becomes the object of affection of composer Ernest R. Ball (played by Dick Haymes) in producer Damon Runyon and director Gregory Ratoff’s good-looking but conventional musical biopic Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
The latter title, a not inconsiderable commercial hit ($2.25 million in domestic rentals), provided Haver with her first de facto lead (though billed below Monty Woolley) and officially made her a star.
Fox’s ‘threat’ to Betty Grable
June Haver was initially perceived as Fox’s “threat” to Betty Grable, who, following Alice Faye’s retirement in 1945, had become the studio’s peaches-and-cream blonde no. 1.
Yet despite a handful of popular movies to her credit, Haver – far more of a cool, classical beauty than either Faye or Grable – was never to become a top box office draw. Betty Grable was to reign supreme as Fox’s color musical blonde queen well into the early 1950s.
In fact, the biggest hit of Haver’s Hollywood career was a “Betty Grable musical”: Irving Cummings’ 1945 period musical biopic The Dolly Sisters, in which Grable (top-billed) and Haver sang and danced as early 20th-century vaudeville entertainers Jennie and Rosie Dolly (born Yansci and Roszika Deutsch in Hungary), while also getting the chance to make love to, respectively, John Payne and Frank Latimore.
Technicolor star
Unsurprisingly, June Haver’s star vehicles at Fox and elsewhere were facsimiles of those starring Betty Grable: Handsomely mounted but routine light musicals, often with a period setting (e.g., Where Do We Go from Here?, Three Little Girls in Blue, Warners’ The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady), at times based on real-life individuals (e.g., I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, with Mark Stevens as songwriter Joseph E. Howard; Look for the Silver Lining, with Haver as Broadway entertainer Marilyn Miller), and invariably featuring insipid storylines that served as interludes to the musical numbers.
With minor adjustments, Haver could have played any of Betty Grable’s characters, and vice versa.
Even so, no one in their right mind could confuse the porcelain doll-like Haver with the saucy, cheeky Grable. Besides, there were two crucial differences in the professional trajectories of the two Fox Blondes:
- Betty Grable began her Hollywood career in the early 1930s, undergoing a decade-long apprenticeship in mostly B fare before finally reaching stardom by way of Fox’s Irving Cummings-directed 1940 color musical Down Argentine Way (in which she, like Haver four years later, replaced Alice Faye). June Haver became a Fox star after working at the studio for about a year.
- Grable was featured in black-and-white films throughout the 1930s, in addition to a trio of titles after becoming a star (A Yank in the R.A.F., I Wake Up Screaming, Footlight Serenade). Haver, on the other hand, was a Technicolor star from beginning to end – with one exception:[2] Joseph M. Newman’s 1951 comedy-drama Love Nest, costarring William Lundigan and featuring up-and-coming Fox Blonde Marilyn Monroe.
June Haver in The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady with Gordon MacRae: Fox Blonde June Haver was mostly cast as a walking, talking, singing, and dancing porcelain doll. In Warners’ The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady, she walks, talks, and dances – but Bonnie Lou Williams provided the singing voice.
Goodbye, Hollywood
In March 1947, June Haver, then 20 years old, eloped with trumpeter James Zito, whom she had met years earlier while touring with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. The couple split up after three months and were officially divorced the following year.
Next, Haver became involved with Beverly Hills dentist John Duzik, at the time in his mid-30s but looking a good decade older. Marriage was an issue because the Catholic Church had refused to annul her previous union – though raised Protestant, Haver had converted to Catholicism at age 18.
In the aftermath of Duzik’s unexpected death due to surgery complications in October 1949, Haver seems to have lost interest in her film career, which, as it happened, had failed to progress in terms of either prestige or box office grosses.
In the early 1950s, she would be seen in only four titles:
- Richard Sale’s light musical I’ll Get By (1950), an updated reboot of Tin Pan Alley (1940), with June Haver and Gloria DeHaven in the old Alice Faye and Betty Grable roles. (William Lundigan and Dennis Day were the men in their lives.)
- At Warner Bros., David Butler’s middling period musical romance The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady (1950), in which Haver has what amounts to a dual role: The blonde title character – romancing/battling Gordon MacRae, dancing with Gene Nelson – and, in a brief musical flashback opposite veteran vaudevillian James Barton, her darker-haired mother. (Bonnie Lou Williams dubbed Haver’s singing voice.)[3]
- Back at Fox, the aforementioned black-and-white comedy-drama Love Nest and Richard Sale’s musical comedy The Girl Next Door (began filming in 1951; interrupted because Haver suffered a concussion during a musical number; finally released in 1953), which turned out to be Haver’s final big-screen effort. Dan Dailey and Dennis Day were her leading men.
At that time, Haver was reportedly earning $3,500 a week.
Postulant nun
In February 1953, June Haver left Hollywood for Kansas, where she became a postulant nun with the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, whose St. Mary’s Academy for Young Ladies had been founded in 1859.[4]
Eight months later Haver was out; depending on the report, either for health reasons or because she missed her family. (There’s no evidence to back up the inevitable rumors that Haver was pregnant during her stay with the Sisters.)
To this day, Dolores Hart (Lonelyhearts, Where the Boys Are) is the only other well-known Hollywood actress who joined a Catholic religious order. In the early 1960s, Hart became – and remains – a Benedictine nun.
Fred MacMurray
In June 1954, June Haver, 28, married the recently widowed Fred MacMurray, 45, her (and Joan Leslie’s) leading man in Gregory Ratoff’s 1945 romantic musical comedy-fantasy Where Do We Go from Here?. Two years later, they adopted twin baby girls. (MacMurray already had two adopted teenage children.)
The couple would be seen together professionally only one more time, in a 1958 episode of the Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz television series The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour – Haver’s sole appearance in front of the camera after quitting films.
Their marriage would last until MacMurray’s death at age 83 in 1991.
No regrets
For all it’s worth, according to a Time magazine article published after June Haver entered the Sisters of Charity at Leavenworth, Haver was “one of the few actresses in town an agent would say nice things about.”
A quarter of a century later, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ruthe Stein was also saying nice things about Haver, explaining that the former 20th Century Fox star had no regrets about giving up her acting career, as the working actresses of her day had, in Haver’s words, “ended up sleeping alone and being very lonely. Their children are writing awful books about them.”
Haver added that her two daughters had promised never to write a tell-all book about her, though “I told them if they wanted to write about their dad, that was OK.”
Following her death in July 2005, Haver’s remains were placed next to MacMurray’s at the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, Los Angeles County.
June Haver filmography
Below is the list of June Haver’s feature films.
1943 The Gang’s All Here … Chorus Girl | Hat-Check Girl (uncredited)
1944 Something for the Boys … Chorus Girl (uncredited)
1944 Home in Indiana … “Cri-Cri” Boole
1944 Irish Eyes Are Smiling … Mary “Irish” O’Neill
1945 Where Do We Go from Here? … Lucilla Powell | Gretchen | Indian
1945 The Dolly Sisters … Roszika “Rosie” Dolly
1946 Three Little Girls in Blue … Pam Charters
1946 Wake Up and Dream … Jenny
1947 I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now … Katie McCullem
1948 Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! … Rad McGill
1949 Look for the Silver Lining … Marilyn Miller
1949 Oh, You Beautiful Doll … Doris Fisher
1950 The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady … Patricia O’Grady | Rosie O’Grady
1950 I’ll Get By … Liza Martin
1951 Love Nest … Connie Scott
1953 The Girl Next Door … Jeannie Laird
notes/references
The Fox Blondes together on screen
[1] 20th Century Fox made a point of partnering their blonde female stars with their (potential) competitors. Here’s a list:
- Alice Faye and Betty Grable in Tin Pan Alley (1940).
- Betty Grable and Carole Landis in Moon Over Miami (1941) and I Wake Up Screaming (1942).
- Betty Grable and June Haver in The Dolly Sisters (1945).
- June Haver and Marilyn Monroe in Love Nest. (Monroe is also briefly seen in the 1948 June Haver-Lon McCallister comedy-drama Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay!.)
- Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953).
- Betty Grable and Sheree North in How to Be Very Very Popular (1955).
- Marilyn Monroe and Hope Lange in Bus Stop (1956).
Though radically different in terms of screen persona and level of blondness, Sonja Henie and Jayne Mansfield were two exceptions to this Fox Blonde rule. (Henie and Carole Landis were both featured in Wintertime, but Landis’ hair is darker in that 1943 musical.)
One could also mention Madeleine Carroll and Alice Faye in On the Avenue (1937), though Carroll was a Paramount star on loan to Fox. But then again … they were both blondes in a Fox release in which they compete for Dick Powell’s affections.
Black-and-white shorts
[2] Before becoming a 20th Century Fox star, June Haver – with dark hair, some baby fat, and a Judy Garland do – was seen in two black-and-white musical shorts at Universal: Larry Ceballos and Reginald Le Borg’s Skyline Serenade (1941), singing with the Tio Fio Rito Orchestra, and Le Borg’s Tune Time (1942).
The two Rosies & Bonnie Lou Williams
[3] Apart from the – one assumes, box-office-friendly – titular Irishwoman (or Irish-American woman), there is no connection between Warners’ 1950 The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady and Fox’s 1943 Betty Grable star vehicle Sweet Rosie O’Grady.
Besides The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady, Bonnie Lou Williams also dubbed June Haver’s singing voice in another Warner Bros. release, Look for the Silver Lining, and in Fox’s Oh, You Beautiful Doll.
Sisters of Charity
[4] John Duzik died at the Sisters of Charity-run St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica.
According to the Time article, June Haver’s connection with the Sisters was developed at that time.
Also worth noting, in the summer of 1950 Haver traveled to Rome, where she had an audience with Pope Pius XII.
Irish Eyes Are Smiling domestic rentals via Aubrey Solomon’s Twentieth Century-Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002; link).
June Haver’s weekly salary at 20th Century Fox and her conversion to Catholicism via the Time article mentioned in the text.
June Haver visiting Pope Pius XII via Tom Vallance’s Haver obituary in The Independent.
June Haver publicity image: 20th Century Fox.
Gordon MacRae and June Haver The Daughter of Rosie O’Grady image: Warner Bros.
Note: Many of the comments listed below are replies to June Haver’s brief obituary published on Alt Film Guide at the time of her death in July 2005.
“June Haver (Actress) Movies” last updated in June 2024.