June later said that after the age of five, she never believed anything her mother said. Madam Rose wasn’t above sabotaging rival acts and was masterful at conning well wishers out of money with her genteel, brave-but-helpless single mother act. Madam Rose taught the girls to lie about their ages to truant officers and railway train conductors, steal blankets and sheets from hotels, and sneak out without paying. At its height, the act was pulling in $1,500 a week on the Orpheum circuit, and Dainty June was a powerhouse with top billing who often stopped the show. “People stared at us when we walked down the street,” wrote Louise later. Louise was one of the newsboy songsters, and even off stage was sometimes dressed as a boy in a knickerbocker suit, cloth cap, and belted leather coat so as not to eclipse June, who sported tiny fur coats, hats and muffs, garish makeup and peroxided ringlets. They received pocket money and the promise of theatrical training. June was now the star of the vaudeville act, “Madam Rose presents Dainty June and her Newsboy Songsters.” The newsboy songsters consisted of a revolving cast of male street urchins whose parents were glad to turn them over to someone who would feed them. When Louise was seven, she joined them permanently. Meanwhile, Rose Louise, nicknamed Plug, a chubby, ungainly child with dark hair in a shiny Dutch bob, stayed back in Seattle with her father or grandparents and went to kindergarten, sometimes visiting her mother and her sister in Hollywood. She couldn’t speak until three, but the films were silent and she could cry for the cameras when her mother told her dog had died. Soon she was launched in vaudeville and also appeared in Hollywood movies. Rose’s father arranged for a debut concert at his lodge hall, and soon Baby June was appearing regularly around Seattle, once as part of the bill on Anna Pavolva’s farewell tour, inspiring Rose to change her billing to “Baby June, the Pocket-sized Pavlova.”Įventually, Baby June got an audition with Alexander Pantages (1876-1936) who had come to Seattle in 1902 and built theaters up and down the west coast. Her little sister June, however, could dance on point at aged two. Rose set to work to make a performer out of Louise, but Louise had no talent at all. She spent months on the road visiting mining towns and lumber camps from Nevada to the Yukon, selling the flashy apparel to prostitutes. His wife Anna was an excellent seamstress and milliner who created extravagant hats and exotic lingerie. Charlie Thompson was a Great Northern Railway employee who worked in the baggage room at King Street station. He is recorded on her 1911 birth certificate, however, as an ad salesman.Īfter the breakup, Rose and the girls moved back in with her parents in West Seattle. Louise's memoir states that her father was a reporter for The Seattle Times. When Rose accused him of being a tight-fisted Norwegian farmer, Hovick reminded her he was actually a newspaperman. Later, Rose told her daughters that her own mother had warned her against marrying a Norwegian, as his wife would always come second to the animals in the barn. Jack Hovick explained that they couldn’t afford expensive dancing lessons for the girls. Rose’s father had not allowed Rose to go on the stage, and now, she wanted a career for her children. By this time the Hovick marriage was in trouble, but it limped along a little longer. Rose reported that the birth was horrific and the baby was washed outside in the snow.Ī second child was born in Vancouver B.C. At 19, she gave birth to the 12-pound Rose Louise on January 8, 1911, at 4314 Frontenac Street in West Seattle. The mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, was a teenaged bride fresh from a convent school when she married Jack Olaf Hovick. She, her little sister June (later known as June Havoc, 1912?-2010), and her monstrous stage mother, Rose Thompson Hovick, passed into show biz legend when her bestselling 1957 memoir, Gypsy, became a Broadway smash. As Gypsy Rose Lee, she became famous in burlesque as a classy and witty strip tease artist. Seattle-born Rose Louise Hovick had her first brush with fame at age one, winning a healthy baby contest.
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