June Martel was a singer and a stage and motion picture actress from Chicago, Illinois. She was a petite brunette who weighed only a bit more than one hundred pounds.

Singer and actress

Her career began as a singer in Atlantic City, New Jersey

Atlantic City, New Jersey

Atlantic City is a city in Atlantic County, New Jersey, United States, and a nationally renowned resort city for gambling, shopping and fine dining. The city also served as the inspiration for the American version of the board game Monopoly. Atlantic City is located on Absecon Island on the coast...

. Martel was in the cast of the Broadway (Manhattan) play, Snatch as Snatch Can, in May 1934. Other actors paired with her included Barton MacLane

Barton MacLane

Barton MacLane was an American actor, playwright, and screenwriter. Although he has appeared in many classic films from the 1930s through the 1960s, he was known for his role as Gen...

. Her first film role was in Front Page Woman

Front Page Woman

Front Page Woman is a 1935 American comedy film directed by Michael Curtiz. The screenplay by Roy Chanslor, Laird Doyle, and Lillie Hayward is based on the novel Women Are Bum Newspapermen by Richard Macauley.-Plot:...

(1935) followed by Going Highbrow (1935). The latter starred Guy Kibbee

Guy Kibbee

Guy Bridges Kibbee was an American stage and film actor.Born in El Paso, Texas, Kibbee began his entertainment career on Mississippi riverboats and eventually became a successful Broadway actor...

. She was the female lead in Fighting Youth (1935). Playing the part of Betty Wilson, Martel starred opposite Charles Farrell

Charles Farrell

Charles Farrell was an American film actor of the 1920s silent era and into the 1930s, and later a television actor...

 and Andy Devine

Andy Devine

Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...

.
The movie combined football excitement with the influence of communism

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 on college athletics.

Martel was signed by Harry Warner

Harry Warner

Harry Morris Warner was an American studio executive, one of the founders of Warner Bros., and a major contributor to the development of the film industry. Along with his three brothers Warner played a crucial role in the film business and played a key role in establishing Warner Bros...

 of Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 in 1935. Other aspiring Warners' actresses were Olivia de Havilland

Olivia de Havilland

Olivia Mary de Havilland is a British American film and stage actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1946 and 1949. She is the elder sister of actress Joan Fontaine. The sisters are among the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s.-Early life:Olivia de Havilland...

, June Grabiner, Nan Gray, and Dorothy Dare. By August 1936 she had become the property of Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...

. The
studio cast her as the ingenue

Ingenue (stock character)

See also Disingenuous, which is not quite the antonym that it may seem!The ingénue is a stock character in literature, film, and a role type in the theatre; generally a girl or a young woman who is endearingly innocent and wholesome. Ingenue may also refer to a new young actress or one typecast in...

 in American Plan. The story concerned a girl who inherits a newspaper. The film was adapted from an unpublished play by Manny Seff and Milton Lazarus.

Martel's final screen roles came in the late 1930s, in western films. Among these are Forlorn River (1937), Wild Horse Rodeo (1937) and Santa Fe Stampede

Santa Fe Stampede

Santa Fe Stampede is a 1938 Three Mesquiteers film starring John Wayne, Ray Corrigan, and Max Terhune. Wayne played the lead in eight of the fifty-one films in the popular series...

(1938).

Personal life

She collected odd pieces of jewelry and had amassed a small trunkload of items by 1937. In February 1941 Martel married screenwriter Frank Fenton

Frank Fenton (writer)

Frank Edgington Fenton was an English-born but American-bred writer of screenplays, short stories, magazine articles, and novels. He was the brother of noted actor and director Leslie Fenton.-Working Writer:...

. Fenton was also a scenarist and magazine writer. Her first husband was Walter J. Klavun, a Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 graduate, whom she divorced in
Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 in 1938.

June Martel died in 1978 in Los Angeles County, California

Los Angeles County, California

Los Angeles County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 9,818,605, making it the most populous county in the United States. Los Angeles County alone is more populous than 42 individual U.S. states...

.

External links