June Havoc (born Ellen Evangeline Hovick;[2] November 8, 1912 – March 28, 2010)[3][4] was a Canadian-born American actress, dancer, stage director and memoirist.

In 1940, she gave a show-stopping performance as Gladys Bumps in the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, with Gene Kelly in the lead role and Van Johnson, who was in the chorus, along with future film director Stanley Donen.

From 1942 to 1944, Havoc appeared in 11 films, including My Sister Eileen with Rosalind Russell, and No Time for Love with Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray.

In 1944, Ethel Merman was tapped to star as the title character in the musical play Sadie Thompson, with a score by Vernon Duke and Howard Dietz, directed and produced by Rouben Mamoulian.

[20] She was called the “most enjoyable asset” of the show and praised for the “consummate skill of her artistry.”[20] Her performance was described as “surprisingly effective“ and “truly touching,” and she was deemed a “worthy successor” to Jeanne Eagels, who had famously first portrayed the role on Broadway in the play Rain.

She also played leading roles in several films noir: Intrigue with George Raft (1947), Chicago Deadline with Alan Ladd (1949), The Story of Molly X with John Russell (1949), and Once A Thief with Cesar Romero (1950).

In 1956, she worked with the Phoenix Theatre Company, first starring as Queen Jocasta opposite John Kerr in The Infernal Machine, playwright Jean Cocteau’s retelling of the Oedipus myth.

New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson opined that her performance brought “a gravity and force that become the tragic situation.”[24] Next Havoc played Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the American Shakespeare Festival Theater & Academy.

Atkinson called her Titania “conspicuously delightful” and found her performance, along with those of Barbara Barrie and Inga Swenson, “a fine Shakespeare revel.”[25] She then returned to the Phoenix Theatre company for the production of The Beaux' Stratagem.

[32] In February and early March 1960, the repertory company performed the plays at the National Theater in Washington, D.C.[34] Commencing later in March, the company toured in Europe and the Middle East, performing the plays in major cities in Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Greece, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Switzerland and France.

The chapters alternated between a chronological progression and a description of the grueling marathon dance contest, detailing the desperation and degradation she experienced and observed.

[36] At the time of the book's publication, Havoc was appearing on Broadway in the play The Warm Peninsula, co-starring Julie Harris and Farley Granger.

[42] The play featured 34 actors, several of whom had highly successful careers, including Doris Roberts, Joe Don Baker, Conrad Janis, Gabriel Dell and Ralph Waite.

"[46] In 1966, Havoc appeared as Millicent Jordan in an all-star revival of Dinner at Eight on Broadway, directed by Sir Tyrone Guthrie, and featuring Walter Pidgeon, Arlene Francis, Darren McGavin and Pamela Tiffin.

The New York Times critic Walter Kerr lauded Havoc’s performance as the hostess of the dinner, noting that she was becoming this country’s Vivien Leigh.

Kerr observed: “She makes the prospect of spending the entire day on the telephone rounding up a guest list, sound like work for a contented dove.

That is to say, she coos cheerily, even with a pencil in her mouth, as she sets about buttering up all the people who can’t say, “no,” and she caresses her very chic white French phone with the exquisite finesse of a Victorian gentlewoman doing needlework.”[47] During the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, the National Endowment for the Arts and the U.S. Department of Education provided funding in 1966 for the creation of professional theater programs in three cities: Los Angeles, New Orleans and Providence, Rhode Island.

[53] Her farewell production in November 1970 was The Skin of Our Teeth, with Havoc portraying Sabina and at age 58, performing on a trapeze 60 feet (18 m) above the audience.

[citation needed] In the fall of 1982, Havoc became the eighth and final actress to portray the featured role of the villainous "Miss Hannigan" in the long-running original Broadway production of the musical Annie.

[55] In 1995, she made her last New York stage appearance at age 82 as the title character in The Old Lady’s Guide to Survival at the Off-Broadway Lamb's Theatre.

[59] In some respects, the show was ahead of its time in that Havoc's character, Willa “Willy” Dodger, was an unmarried lawyer with her own legal practice in a small New England town.

[60] From the 1960s through 1990, Havoc appeared occasionally on such successful television series as The Untouchables; Murder, She Wrote; McMillan & Wife; The Paper Chase; and The Outer Limits, as well as an arc on the popular soap opera General Hospital.

On October 26, Havoc boarded a chartered plane with 22 other FAC members, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Danny Kaye, to Washington, D.C. to protest and attend the second week of hearings.

[69] The FAC also sponsored two network radio broadcasts, Hollywood Fights Back, on October 26, and November 2, 1947, in which Havoc and 44 other members voiced their opposition to the HUAC hearings and the existence of the committee itself.

[77] As a result, movie box office receipts dropped 20%, and even established stars like Bogart were compelled to make public apologies.

[79] In the mid-1970s, Havoc purchased for $230,000 an abandoned train depot and various pre-Civil War buildings on eight acres of land called Cannon Crossing in the Cannondale Historic District of Wilton, Connecticut.

[81] A long-time resident of Fairfield County (Weston, Wilton and lastly North Stamford) Connecticut, Havoc was fiercely devoted to the care and well-being of animals.

[89] For her performance in Habeas Corpus, Havoc was nominated for the Drama Desk Award for best supporting actress in a play for the 1975–76 Broadway season.

[93] In his autobiography Original Story, Arthur Laurents reports that June Havoc refused to sign a release for any claim regarding the content of the musical Gypsy.

She noted that this incident resulted in an article by Lee Israel, in which Stritch criticized directors, published in The New York Times, which led to her casting in the musical Company.