Stage and Screen Star June Allyson Dead at 88

June Allyson, best known for her work in 1940s movies, died Saturday July 8 at the age of 88. She died from pulmonary respiratory failure and acute bronchitis, according to The Associated Press.

Allyson made her feature film debut in 1937 in Ups and Downs and appeared in bit roles in a series of other movies before making her Broadway debut in 1938 in the musical revue Sing Out the News. By 1942, she had also appeared on the Great White Way in the tuners Very Warm for May, Higher and Higher, Panama Hattie and Best Foot Forward. She once told a reporter, as quoted in The New York Times, "I couldn't dance, and, Lord knows, I couldn't sing, but I got by somehow. Richard Rodgers was always keeping them from firing me."

In 1944, Allyson had her career-making role in the musical movie Two Girls and a Sailor. Her subsequent film credits include Music for Millions, Her Highness and the Bellboy, The Sailor Takes a Wife, Two Sisters from Boston, Till the Clouds Roll By, The Secret Heart, The Bride Goes Wild, The Three Musketeers, Little Women, The Reformer and the Redhead, Right Cross, Too Young to Kiss for which she received a Golden Globe Award, The Girl in White, Battle Circus, The Glenn Miller Story, Executive Suite, Woman's World, Strategic Air Command, The Shrike, The Opposite Sex, My Man Godfrey and A Stranger in My Arms. She also had her own television program, The DuPont Show with June Allyson. In the late 1960s, with the peak of her career past her, she returned to Broadway in the play Forty Carats. That marked her last appearance on the Great White Way.

Allyson married movie star Dick Powell in 1945, against the wishes of MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer. The couple had two children one adopted and remained married until his death in 1963. Allyson married and divorced Glenn Maxwell soon after Powell's death. She married dentist David Ashrow in 1976. In 1985, she became the spokesperson for Depends undergarments. Allyson wrote about her career and personal life including her alcoholism in her self-titled autobiography.

Powell is survived by her husband, daughter and son.