More Havoc

By June Havoc

June Havoc worked professionally since the age of two. In More Havoc she writes of casting calls, early marriage, modeling, a love affair with an older man, motherhood, her first success on Broadway... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060118113
• ISBN13: 9780060118112
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: Harper & Row
• Length: 277 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 5.5" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Sisters, Sisters, There Were Never Such Devoted Sisters

"More Havoc," by June Havoc, continues the story of her long struggle, from vaudeville performer aged 2 1/2, to stardom on the Broadway stage. (She achieved it 'overnight,' as they say, in "Pal Joey," in 1940-41.) Its emotional focus, however, is on the growing closeness between herself and her famous sister Gypsy Rose Lee, the witty stripper. They were estranged as children, but drawn together as adults, by the demands of their careers, and of their frightening stage mother Rose. This book continues from roughly where Havoc's first volume left off; although it's written in a hipster, jazzbaby style that makes it tougher to read. The author tells us, briefly, about her two marriages, and the birth of her daughter April, (not a product of either.) She goes a little more deeply into her teenage years as a dance marathoner, telling us only now about having been nearly kidnapped for a rich old sexual pervert that liked to do his victim-shopping on the midnight dance floor. (And while she's at that, she mentions that, when she was a child, several of Rose's boyfriends sexually molested her.) The actress reminisces about her stint as a showroom model, working with the recently-deceased Shelley Winters, who was really too buxom for the job. She tells us about auditioning for an elderly George M. Cohan, long past the days he could get a show on Broadway. She remembers her early days in Hollywood, represented by the ubiquitous agent Leland Hayward; nearly tripping over a dead drunk John Barrymore, and getting herself some plastic work. But the book's largely about Havoc's relationship with her sister. The writer calls her from the Boston tryout of "Mexican Hayride,' in a panic about ugly, ill-fitting costumes in which she couldn't dance. (Lee was a talented seamstress, who had made all the costumes for their vaudeville acts, and then her own burlesque act.) Lee was by then a star herself, and an item with the famous impresario Mike Todd; nevertheless, she rushed up, and made her sister new costumes overnight. Havoc defends Lee against various rumors heard then: she insists there was no ghostwriter on Lee's best-selling "G-String Murders," nor was Lee originally Rose Levy from Brooklyn. She takes issue with the musical "Gypsy," based on Lee's autobiography of the same name: Lee considers it her monument, Havoc swears her sister was always too talented to play the back end of a horse, as the musical portrays her doing. Finally, she tells us about life in Lee's lovely Manhattan townhouse, on 63rd Street, as it was lived by the combined households: Havoc and her daughter April; Lee and her son Erik, by famed Hollywood director Otto Preminger. These sisters shared a childhood tougher than we can imagine, in which they were perhaps too competitive for comfort. And each managed to achieve a notable career in adulthood. What's more,they found their way back together; now there's a talented pair.

EXCELLENT READ!!!!!!!! If you love June, you need this book

Here is the story of June Havoc's life from the time she left her mother and the vaudeville act behind until her mother died. Ms. Havoc is prone to write with few personal details, but her books are wonderful in spite of that! She tells each story with an effervescent charm and wit, while remaining somewhat aloof about HER feelings on issues. While she claims not to be the strong character in life that her sister was, I have found her to be of tremendous strength and enduring power. Check out Marathon '33, also by June Havoc. I'm sure it is the same book as her first autobiography, 'Early Havoc'.