June Gale (born June Gilmartin; July 6, 1911 – November 13, 1996) was an American
actress
An actor or actress is a person who portrays a Character (arts), character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. The analogous Greek ...
sometimes credited under her married name as June Levant.
Biography
Born in San Francisco, Gale rose to fame as part of the
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
act The
Gale Sisters, a dancing quadruplet act that was actually two sets of twins. She appeared on Broadway with her sisters in ''
Flying High'' (1930) and ''
George White's Scandals
''George White's Scandals'' were a long-running string of Broadway revues produced by George White that ran from 1919–1939, modeled after the ''Ziegfeld Follies''. The "Scandals" launched the careers of many entertainers, including W. C. Fie ...
'' (1931). In the early 1930s, she made her first films in
Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywood, ...
originally as a
Goldwyn Girl in ''
Roman Scandals
''Roman Scandals'' is a 1933 American black-and-white pre-Code musical film starring Eddie Cantor, Ruth Etting, Gloria Stuart, Edward Arnold and David Manners. It was directed by Frank Tuttle. The film features a number of intricate production ...
'', and gradually she rose to more notable parts, generally in
B movies
A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double feature ...
after signing with
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
in 1936.
In December 1939, Gale married
Oscar Levant
Oscar Levant (December 27, 1906August 14, 1972) was an American concert pianist, composer, conductor, author, radio game show panelist, television talk show host, comedian and actor. He was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for reco ...
in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and they remained wed until his death in 1972. In 1978, she married
Henry Ephron
Henry Ephron (May 26, 1911 – September 6, 1992) was an American playwright, screenwriter and film producer who often worked with his wife, Phoebe (née Wolkind). He was active as a writer from the early 1940s through the early 1960s.
Ea ...
.
Gale was an integral part of two TV talk shows. After an on-air disagreement led to her leaving her co-host role on ''The Oscar Levant Show'', she began her own show in 1958, with
Lloyd Thaxton
Lloyd Thaxton (May 31, 1927 – October 5, 2008) was an American writer, television producer, director, and television host widely known for his syndicated pop music television program of the 1960s, ''The Lloyd Thaxton Show'', which began as a l ...
.
Death
Gale died of pneumonia on November 13, 1996, aged 85, at
Ceders-Sinai Medical Center. She was buried at
Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.
Filmography
References
External links
*
1911 births
1996 deaths
American film actresses
Actresses from San Francisco
20th-century American actresses
American stage actresses
Vaudeville performers
Ephron family
Deaths from pneumonia in California
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