June Clyde was a vivacious blonde who made a significant impact in Hollywood during the 1930s. Born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, but raised in San Francisco, she began her career on the vaudeville circuit at the tender age of eight, billed as 'Baby Tetrazini'.
Her talent as a songstress and dancer led her to join the chorus line in Topsy and Eva, starring The Duncan Sisters, in 1925. This marked the beginning of her proper stage career.
In 1929, June was signed by RKO and appeared in a couple of bit parts before being thrust into the limelight as the female lead in Tanned Legs, a minor musical comedy set in high society, with songs by the celebrated wit Oscar Levant.
The picture's moderate success led to her next role in RKO's second A-grade musical, Hit the Deck, in the same year. In 1932, June was voted one of the year's WAMPAS Baby Stars, alongside Ginger Rogers.
Between film work, June posed for fan magazines and freelanced, receiving third-billing in a John Wayne western, Arizona, made at Columbia. A more substantial acting role was that of Teola Garfield in Fox's pre-code drama, Tess of the Storm Country, alongside the popular pairing of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell.
Two years later, June co-starred in Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, with Reginald Owen as Sherlock Holmes. This marked the better part of her screen résumé.
By the mid-1930s, June was relegated to leads in second features and decided to try her luck on the other side of the Atlantic. She alternated between theatrical work in London's West End and Broadway, starring in productions such as "Lucky Break" (1934) and "The Flying Trapeze" (1935).
She also toured Australia in the late 1940s with "Born Yesterday" and "Annie Get Your Gun". Despite being quoted as saying that "Hollywood Is the dullest place on earth!" in a 1935 interview, June persevered there for most of the 1940s, appearing in films for Poverty Row studios like Republic and PRC.
Towards the end of her career, she made several films in England, the last of which was a minuscule role in a maudlin Joan Crawford melodrama, The Story of Esther Costello, in 1957. June eventually retired to Florida with her husband, the director Thornton Freeland, and pursued her hobbies of riding, tennis, and ping-pong.
