Actress immortalized as Gypsy Rose Lee’s sister

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This article was published 30/03/2010 (5671 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ACTRESS and writer June Havoc, whose childhood in vaudeville as Baby June was immortalized in the musical Gypsy, has died in Connecticut at age 97, her publicist said Monday.

Havoc, the younger sister of famed stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Stamford, Conn.

While she never reached the fame of her sister, Havoc had a varied, successful theatre career that stretched from 1918 into the next century.

With music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by Arthur Laurents, Gypsy is considered one of the best musicals ever written. The original 1959 production starred Ethel Merman and it has been revived several times since. It also became a 1962 movie starring Rosalind Russell, with Natalie Wood as the grown-up Gypsy.

It focuses on the archetypal stage mother, Mama Rose, who ferociously pushes her daughter "Baby June" into vaudeville stardom at age six while her older sister struggles to compete. The play was based on a memoir of the older daughter, Louise, who grew up to be Gypsy Rose Lee. Havoc made no effort to obstruct the show, though she detested it.

The early 1930s were a grim period for Havoc,. Vaudeville was dead and she had entered the "awkward stage" between child actress and ingenue. She competed in seven dance marathons, a Depression spectacle in which couples danced around the clock until they collapsed; the last pair standing won a cash prize.

By 1936, she had evolved into a statuesque blond beauty, and she began appearing in Broadway plays and musicals. In 1940, Havoc portrayed the conniving Gladys Bumps in Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s Pal Joey and her performance brought Hollywood offers.

She played feature roles in 26 films including My Sister Eileen, Gentleman’s Agreement, Red Hot and Blue and Chicago Deadline.

But Havoc’s major work was on the stage. She appeared in more than a dozen productions on Broadway, including Cole Porter’s Mexican Hayride (1944) and Sadie Thompson (also 1944). Her last Broadway appearance was in the early 1980s, one of the many replacements as the evil Miss Hannigan in Annie.

— The Associated Press