LYCOS RETRIEVER 
June Allyson: New York
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Allyson was born Ella Geisman in the Bronx, New York, the daughter of a building superintendent. Because of a bad fall at the age of eight, she was forced to wear a back brace for four years. She then took up swimming and dancing lessons to strengthen her limbs, and was soon good enough to enter dance competitions. "I used to cut school to go and see Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers," she recalled. "I would brag that I could dance as well as them, so when an ad appeared in the papers for dancers, my friends dared me to audition." Years later she missed her chance to star opposite Astaire in Royal Wedding (1951) because she was pregnant.
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Allyson was born Eleanor (Ella) Geisman[1] in the Bronx, New York City to Clara Provost and Robert Geisman on October 7, 1917. Her paternal grandparents, Harry Geisman and Anna Hafner, were immigrants from Germany,[1] although Allyson has claimed that her last name was originally "Van Geisman", and was of Dutch origin.[2] June was six months old when her alcoholic father who'd worked as a janitor abandoned the family. Her mother worked as a telephone operator and restaurant cashier. Allyson was brought up in near poverty. At eight, a dead tree branch fell on her while she was bicycling. Several bones were broken, and doctors said she would never walk again.
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Before she became June Allyson, Ella Geisman endured a some-what deprived childhood in The Bronx, New York, before gradually breaking into Broadway musical theater in the late 1930s. Like many Hollywood personalities of the studio era, Allyson, one of Metro-Goldyn-Mayer's most popular stars and biggest box-office draws of the 1940s and early 1950s, received her initial show business experience on the New York stage. At the age of twenty Geisman was cast in the chorus line of a flop Broadway musical, but this lead to other parts in more successful productions, including a bit part in the George Abbott-directed collegiate musical, Best Foot Forward. When Best Foot Forward was filmed in 1943, Geisman went to Hollywood with the show, and, as June Allyson, soon found herself with a Hollywood contract, primarily due to the efforts of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer Joe Pasternak.
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June was born with the name Ella Geisman in the Bronx in New York on October 7, 1917. Her mother and father divorced. She didn't live with her father but with her mother. Her mother had a hard time keeping things together for them.
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Allyson had become such a good dancer that she tried out at several auditions. She was hired as a chorus line professional dancer for the Broadway Musical “Sing Out the News” in 1938. Her next professional appearance was in the 1941 musical, “Best Foot Forward”. She was subsequently picked to be in the film version of “Best Foot Forward”, in 1941, and so made her film debut.
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Allyson's love of dancing started when she saw her first Astaire/Rogers movie, and she began practising routines at home after seeing Astaire's films over and over again. A determined and ambitious youngster, she managed to get a role in one of the Vitaphone two-reelers being made in New York, Swing for Sale (1937), followed by four musical shorts for Educational Films, Pixilated, Dime a Dance, Dates and Nuts (all 1937) and Sing for Sweetie (1938).
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