June MacCloy

Biography

June Mary MacCloy was born in Sturgis, Michigan on June 2, 1909. When she was a child her family moved to Toledo, Ohio. With her radiant smile, her tall, blonde, good looks and unusual voice, she brightened many a film and stage with her talent. After 1940 she became an obscure part of Hollywood and Broadway history. When she was a deep-voiced, 5' 71/2" teenage girl, she was chosen by song writer Lew Brown (of the prolific team DeSylva, Brown & Henderson) to do an impersonation of Broadway star Harry Richman, singing "I'm On The Crest of a Wave" in the ninth edition of George White's Scandals (Apollo Theater, July 2, 1928; 230 performances), starring Richman, Frances Williams, Willie & Eugene Howard and Ann Pennington. She and her mother moved to New York, and before embarking on a film career she was featured in the Parkington unit vaudeville shows, designed by Vincente Minnelli. In 1930 she was signed by Paramount Pictures to make film shorts in Astoria, L.I. Before making any features for Paramount, she was loaned out to United Artists to make her first feature, "Reaching for the Moon" with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Bebe Daniels. She's the memorable, tall, pretty blond with the deep voice, singing 16 measures of "When the Folks High Up Do The Mean Low Down!" by Irving Berlin. That same year, Paramount co-starred her with Frances Dee and Jack Oakie in "June Moon" (based on the Lardner-Kaufman play). Next came "The Big Gamble" (R-K-O Pathe) starring Bill Boyd, with Dorothy Sebastian, Warner Oland and ZaSu Pitts. In the early 1930s MacCloy made at least nine film shorts, including a series of short comedies called "The Gay Girls" with Marion Schilling and Gertrude Short. Three of her shorts were directed by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, using the name "William Goodrich." In 1932 she appeared with Lupe Velez, Bert Lahr, Buddy Rogers and June Knight in Hot-Cha, Florenz Ziegfeld's last production (Ziegfeld Theater, March 8, 1932; 119 performances). Her featured song was "Little Old New York" (unpublished) by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson. When Hot-Cha closed, June sang on the cruise ship, "S.S. Transylvania, " and spent the rest of the decade performing in Chicago, New York and San Francisco clubs and theaters, with the orchestras of Johnny Hamp, Henry King, Ben Pollock and Griff Williams (with whom she recorded for Decca). Some of these spots included New York's Paramount Theater, Chicago's Chez Paree, and San Francisco's Hotel Mark Hopkins. For Warner Bros./Vitaphone, she made a Technicolor two-reeler with Leon Erroll called "Good Morning, Eve, " directed by Roy Mack (September, 1934). Because of her contralto voice, she felt she was overlooked by radio producers. She suspected, many years later, that film producers may have thought she was a Lesbian. At Columbia Studios, she made "Glamour for Sale" in 1940, with Anita Louise and Roger Pryor. Her last real role was in "Go West" (MGM, 1940) in which she tried to seduce Groucho Marx, and sang a song, "You Can't Argue With Love" (unpublished) in the beer hall. She retired from performing when she married California architect Neal Wendell Butler, with whom she raised two children in Southern California. She met her husband through their mutual love of jazz music. She was widowed in 1985.