June MacCloy (born this day in 1909) worked with many of the comedy greats on stage and in the movies, and was noted for her ability to sing in what was essentially the baritone range, making her sound like a man. Originally from Toledo, she started out in vaudeville, singing in a duo with a high school friend. Her first break came when she was cast in Earl Carroll’s Vanities in 1928, but her mother made her turn the job down due to the skimpy costumes. Lew Brown of the songwriting team of De Sylva, Brown and Henderson got her in the 1928 editions of George White’s Scandals; she was hired to sing the team’s “I’m on the Crest of a Wave” — while impersonating Harry Richman. This was probably the most creative use of her unique voice, and essentially her big break.
MacCloy’s Hollywood career began in 1930. She had decent roles in Reaching for the Moon with Douglas Fairbanks, Bebe Daniels and Edward Everett Horton, and in the screen version of George S. Kaufman’s June Moon (1931) starring Jack Oakie and Frances Dee, directed by Eddie Sutherland. Most of her films were musical shorts — a notable one was the elaborate color fantasia Good Morning Eve (1934), in which she played Eve to Leon Errol’s Adam. In 1932, she returned to Broadway one last time to appear in Hot-Cha! with Bert Lahr, Buddy Rogers and Lupe Velez. Meanwhile, as she would through the end of her career, she was also singing with big bands in night clubs, resorts and hotels. After a break of six years, she returned to films in 1940 to take two of her best parts, a role in the crime drama Glamour for Sale; and the part of Lulubelle in the Marx Brothers’ Go West, which she is best known for today. In 1941 she married architect Neal Wendell Butler and retired to raise a family. She passed away in 2005 at the age of 95.
To learn more about vaudeville performers like June MacCloy, please see my book No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever fine books are sold.
(Travalanche) 