June Allyson

Ever-youthful June Allyson, at the premiere of Leaky Women (1949)

June Allyson (October 7, 1917 – July 8, 2006) was an American water sports and scat enthusiast, who funded her passion with the side hobby of film acting.

June's film career spanned for years and years, but she is best remembered today for being "that old lady in those adult diaper commercials" – and for having a huskier voice than Harvey Fierstein. She was signed to MGM studios in 1943 and made her debut in the sleeper hit Best Feces Forward.

Allyson, born Eleanor Geisman in The Bronx, New York City, was a rather mellow child ... except when she would piss and/or crap her pants. Her parents noticed how her face would light up whenever this happened and gave her the nickname "Dookie".

Hollywood success

After slumming it in the scat clubs of New York City, Dookie moved to Los Angeles and was signed to the poverty row CoproTone Films, where she was initially being groomed as a rival to Joan Crawford. Her debut in the musical extravaganza The Ass Follies of 1939 was followed by the moody noir A Woman's Feces. Unfortunately, CoproTone was shut down shortly thereafter and Dookie's contract was terminated. But she was determined to make it, and after a scat party thrown at the estate of Danny Thomas, she met the acquaintance of Emperor of MGM and drug dealer to Judy Garland, Louis B. Mayer. Mayer didn't think "Dookie Geisman" was a fitting name for a star, so he christened his new find "June Allyson". Allyson's film Two Girls and a Diaper was a big hit and she was awarded with a raise in salary. June was now hot property and was loaned out to Paramount Pictures in 1956 for The Ten Commandments, where she personally provided the "green mist of death" which killed Egypt's first-born. Allyson was overjoyed with all her success and treated herself by purchasing a luxurious mansion, constructed entirely out of porcelain, which she affectionately nicknamed "The Bowl". After wandering around The Bowl and leaving her scent on all the furniture like a feral cat, June toasted herself in the mirror with a prune martini and eloped with actor Dick Powell.

Scandals

Due to June's ever-increasing fascination and adoration of all things scat, which in the end made her notoriously difficult to work with, resulted in many unpleasant incidents.

The Mayer ultimatum

June's poor personal hygiene and rancid odor began to make waves (literally, if you count her daily afternoon crap break, which never failed to overflow the toilets) on the MGM lot. No star or director wanted to work with her anymore and the complaints began to mount. Emperor Mayer considered firing her, but changed his mind after he found a horse's head, carved entirely out of June's own feces, in his bed one morning.

The I Want to Live! incident

From then on a reign of fear prevailed in Hollywood whenever June's name was mentioned. When film producer Walter Wanger refused to even consider June for the Susan Hayward part in I Want to Live!, it is said that she stormed out of his offices muttering darkly about "mudslide insurance"; sure enough, a few days later Wanger's sparkly canyonside retreat was swept away in a tide of raw sewage that exhausted the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation for an entire month and forced the evacuation of several adjoining neighborhoods.

CoproLume

While June was at the peak of her career, she also tried her hand at creating beauty supplies, which lead to one of the ugliest incidents during the "Golden (Shower) Era" of Hollywood. In 1949, June was playing one of her few dramatic leads in The Stratton Story, which would go on to win an Academy Award. Interviewed on set and complimented on her luminous acting and looks, June revealed that she had just patented a new face cream and was testing it in front of the cameras before calling in investors and going public. Apparently the ingredients – soy beans, black beans, brussels sprouts, brown rice, broccoli, stilton, rhubarb and army-strength turkish espresso – were personally mixed by June before being squirted at high velocity into little toilet-shaped porcelain jars ready for sale; but when MGM caught wind of June's extracurricular on-set activities, they shut down shooting and slapped a biohazard warning on June's dressing room-cum-laboratory, with the LA Dept. of Sanitation later towing the trailer to the center of Death Valley and exploding it. June retaliated with a lawsuit claiming that she had been promised that, should CoproLume prove successful, The Stratton Story would even be renamed as The Shat-on Story, incomplete portions of which remain locked in a vault until 2049.

Too young

The comedy Too Young to Piss, which was extensively re-filmed and most of the earlier version shelved after poor preview results, ended up being retitled Too Young to Kiss after a threatened lawsuit from the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation (which was involved in a long-running dispute with Allyson). Originally, it was directed by Fritz Lang and filmed in the European expressionist style that was in vogue at the time. June plays "Baby Stink", a toddler in outlandish diaper, bib and frilly bonnet who nevertheless stands as tall as any of the adult characters in the film. Wandering aimlessly along the street one day, Baby Stink claps eyes on the most beautiful man she has ever seen: José Ferrer (subsequently hospitalized with respiratory failure and replaced in the final version). She spits out her pacifier and, waddling fiercely in her leak-springing diaper, makes a dash for him, but he runs off around the nearest house. Baby Stink gives chase and traps him by the side of a swimming pool where, cowering in fear, he is treated to Baby whipping off her diaper and training a virulent yellow cascade of pure devotion onto him. "But, Baby!" he screams, falling backwards into the pool, "You're too young to kiss!" As he drowns, Baby smirks and croaks winningly "Sure! But I ain't too young to piss!" There follows a rather indescribable musical number involving water fountains and a daredevil stunt from Esther Williams.

The lake in Possessed

The lake used in the 1947 feature belonged to a private residence on June Allyson's estate and was known for its dark, murky appearance even in daytime, which is why Joan Crawford's director Curtis Bernhardt chose to use it. Every time Joan came near that lake, she would fill with so much dread that it contributed to her eerie performance. In the 1950s, the L.A. Department of Sanitation confiscated the property from June Allyson and tried to drain the murky (and pungent) lake with special dredge tunnels, but that resulted in a major biohazard that devastated Brentwood and several adjoining districts. It's little wonder why immediately after Possessed, Joan Crawford played a neurotic clean freak in Harriet Craig.

Feuds

Joan Crawford

Adding to June's problems at this time was a feud that erupted between herself and fellow nymphomaniac Joan Crawford. On March 23, 1948, when Crawford celebrated her 40th birthday (she insisted she was born in 1908, despite records showing she witnessed George Washington's crossing of the Delaware), there was a grand celebration held in honor of her birth at Ciro's nightclub. Many famous colleagues attended, but Allyson was absent because she heard that the birthday cake would have custard filling as opposed to prune filling. Crawford was enraged by Allyson's diss and called her a "coprophilia fiend" and "poo-filled bitch" in an interview featured in Photoplay magazine. Allyson responded by downing 50 pounds of prunes, a trough full of cabbage, cauliflower and re-fried beans, and gallons of fizzy drinks. She then drove to Crawford's Brentwood estate, walked into the parlor, removed her diaper, let out a husky cackle, and squatted down. Governor Earl Warren declared LA County a disaster area later that day. The two actresses seemed to have buried the hatchet (into each other's backs) in the 1950s when Joan came back to MGM to star in Torch Song, but the truce was short lived when Joan gave June a copy of Everybody Poops and installed (then newly invented) NASA-certified toilets in Miss Allyson's bungalow; June took great offense and stormed into Joan's dressing room while she was away and poured all her "crimson tide" onto the vanity table.

Louella Parsons

Despite her reputation in Hollywood, however, the greater American public were completely oblivious to June's obnoxious agenda of incontinence and scat games. It was rare to find negative press on June when she was a big star because the journalists at the time literally lived in sheer terror at the thought of June's ghastly (or gassy) wrath. Entertainment gossip reporter Louella Parsons intended to pen an exposé on June's tacky behavior on the set of Her Highness and the Bellboy, where she peed all over costar Hedy Lamarr's film outfits because she was jealous that Lamarr received the more glamorous wardrobe. June, however, was not to be messed with. When Allyson got wind of Louella's planned article, she drove to her home and spelled out the message "Don't Shit With the Allyson" on the driveway using her fresh dung. Louella subsequently got the message (which could be detected, through the sense of smell, from Holmby Hills to Catalina Island) and retreated in fright and repulsion.

Later career snags

The shits

As June's career entered the 1970s, she had trouble landing roles outside scat fetish stag films and had to seek work in other career fields, but in 1976 things seemed to look bright when playwright David Barry approached June about starring in a cinematic adaption of his play The Shits of August, which would unite her with the once-adversary Joan Crawford for the first time, but after the great Outhouse Catastrophe of '76 (a mysterious scandal known in some circles as "Crappergate") June was forced to withdraw. By the time her anus recovered, Joan Crawford had become unavailable and passed away before the project could resume, after which it went on a permanent hiatus. Eventually, Lillian Gish came on board to replace Joan, but at that time June Allyson had already signed on with Depends, who wouldn't let her out of her contract, so the role was recast with Bette Davis. This casting decision lead to significant script changes, removing much of the scatological and urophagia subtext from the film, which resulted in the title change of The Whales of August.

Salo

In 1975, June was approached by Pier Paolo Pasolini to star in what would become his final film, at that time an untitled project based on June's early days of owning a scat club right across the street from the Hollywood Canteen. Sadly, June walked off the set right before filming began when she discovered that instead of using her own dung, the art director instead opted for chocolate and orange marmalade. June sued to have her name removed from the film and after a hasty rewrite, Pier Paolo Pasolini tacked on the De Sade reference and released it as an unrelated feature, titled Salo: 120 Days of Sodom. (Had June stuck around, the proposed title would have been Salo: 120 Days of Scatting.) June Allyson apparently held stock with the Italian prune industry and would've made a mint (and an enema) from the film if she had been used (along with her bowels.) To her dying day, June Allyson claimed that both the Los Angeles Department of Sanitation and Joan Crawford had connections at Cinecitta and were secretly responsible for sabotaging her one chance to work with Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Depends

After eating so many wrinkled old prunes, June became a wrinkled old prune herself, and the public grew tired of her. After June's film career hit the skids (literally, if you count all the skid marks), she made money by working as a "color girl" at a trendy hair salon in Beverly Hills. June rather enjoyed working there and even discovered that she could make her own hair dyes. She excelled at making shades for redheads and for brunettes in particular. The two most popular Allyson™ dyes are "Crimson Tide" and "Fudge Head". Her life would soon change dramatically, though, after she was thrust back into the spotlight by being selected spokeswoman for Depend adult undergarments. June delighted viewers with her own personal tales of urinary and fecal incontinence. The ads were a huge success and June became "hot" again. She was so hot, in fact, that she recorded a song parody of Prince's "Purple Rain" called "Yellow Rain", which peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984.

Flushed down the toilet of life

After a night of heavy clubbing at LA's hottest scat club and downing 51 prune martinis, 88-year-old June died peacefully in a pool of her own diarrhea. She stated in her will that she be cremated and her ashes scattered in the used bedpans of every patient at Cedars-Sinai. Speaking at her funeral, longtime friend and fellow MGM actress/corpse Cyd Charisse said of June: "June was a great gal ... but, my God! She habitually smelled like a public outhouse!"

Selected filmography

• Diapers Are Forever (1971)
• My Man Poopfrey (1957)
• The Ten Commandments (1956) (cameo – "green mist of death")
• Remains to Be Dumped (1953)
• Butt Mud Circus (1953)
• The Girl in Brown (1952)
• Too Young to Kiss (1951) (a.k.a. Too Young to Piss)
• The Reformer and the Pisshead (1950)
• The Stratton Story (a.k.a. The Shat-on Story)
• Leaky Women (1949)
• The Bride Goes Poop (1948)
• Good Poos (1947)
• The Secret Fart (1946)
• Till the Dung Rolls By (1946)
• Two Turds from Boston (1946)
• The Sailor Takes a Crap (1945)
• Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945)
• Urinate for Millions (1944)
• Pee on the People (1944)
• Two Girls and a Diaper (1944)
• Scat Crazy (1943)
• Best Feces Forward (1943)
• A Woman's Feces (1941)
• The Ass Follies of 1939 (1939)

Discography

• "Yellow Rain" (1984)