Word: allysons
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...unspoken message of these films was that a woman, especially a good woman, has to settle. Compromise was the minor key in a movie's final fanfare. Allyson lost out on a few good roles: Royal Wedding with her idol Astaire (because she was pregnant with her and Powell's child Ricky), Johnny Belinda and All About Eve (because MGM wouldn't loan her out to other studios...
...meatiest role, and the meat was deliciously rancid, was opposite Jose Ferrer in The Shrike, where she's the harridan who nearly drives her husband to suicide. Her performance was both stark and nicely judged - "good (and nasty)," Thomson says, approvingly - but it didn't vault Allyson into the realm of Serious Actress. It didn't set her on a new, thornier path, paving the way for her to play roles suitable for the decades to come, when the Wife role would be replaced by the Woman With a Past. Casting directors thought only of Allyson's past...
...Allyson gradually retreated from films, to the mellower, more congenial medium of TV, where she occasionally appeared on her husband's anthology series and starred, for the 1961 season, in her own show. She also spent time caring for the ailing Powell - who, like his co-stars John Wayne and Susan Hayward, and reported scores of other crew members, had contracted cancer after shooting The Conqueror on location near a nuclear test site. He died...
...Lady in Hotel in the Carrie Fisher TV movie, These Old Broads, which is famous in Hollywood gossip history as the production that brought Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds back within spitting distance of each other, nearly a half century after Liz stole Eddie Fisher from Debbie. IMDb says Allyson's appearance was "uncredited." Ouch...
...Allyson is known to the later Baby Boomers, it's as the spokeswoman for Depends, the undergarment for control of aging bladders. That could get a giggle, I suppose, but Allyson doesn't deserve one. With her last husband, Dr. David Ashrow, D.D.S., she established the June Allyson Foundation with the goal of "Supporting medical research of incontinence to better understand its causes and impact, improve education, and develop improved treatment options." She also, Wikipedia says, raised money for the Judy Garland and James Stewart museums...