LYCOS RETRIEVER 
June Allyson: Mother
built 655 days ago
After her parents divorced when she was a toddler, June Allyson was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother. She rarely saw her father after the divorce. At the age of nine, she was injured when lightning struck a tree. A heavy branch fell, crushing and killing a friend, and maiming Allyson's legs. Despite her doctors' pessimism, she stubbornly regained her ability to walk, and, enthralled by Hollywood musicals, she taught herself to dance. Her awkward gait eventually faded to a slight limp, and finally disappeared.
Source:
Allyson was born in the Bronx in 1917 (she claimed 1923) to a poor family, raised by her mother after her alcoholic father drifted off. At the age of 8 she suffered broken bones when a tree branch fell on her and was told she'd never walk again. After months of therapy, Allyson proved the doctors wrong. By 1940 she was understudying Betty Hutton in the Broadway musical Panama Hattie.
Source:
Born Eleanor Geisman in a Bronx tenement in 1917, she was the younger of the two children of a building superintendent who deserted his wife when June was six months old. Her brother went to live with his father, while June stayed with her mother, who took poorly paid work in a printing plant. "It's hard to forget those days," said Allyson:
Source:
"Sometimes my mother would not eat dinner when I was eating and I'd ask why," Allyson wrote in her 1982 autobiography, written with Frances Spatz Leighton. "She would say she wasn't hungry, but later I realized there was only enough food for one." The two of them moved often, and sometimes young Ella was put in the care of her grandmother or another relative.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Mother