June Kenney: From Child Star to Scream Queen

For an actress, there is no greater torture than waiting for the phone to ring.

Sure, we know July 6 is the birthday of Annette Kellerman, Bill Haley, Pat Paulsen, Merv Griffin, Sebastian Cabot, William Schallert, Janet Leigh, Sylvester Stallone, Vince McMahon, Joe Keaton, Nancy Reagan, Della Reese,June Gale, Candy Barr, and Marie McDonald; but we have already done posts on them. So we break new ground today in erecting a monument to actress June Kenney (1933-2021).

Kenny had a respectable career in nearly every form of media going in her day. A child performer from age four, she sang and danced and appeared on radio in the Boston area from around age four. Her father was Irish; her mother, French Canadian — that’s a very Massachusetts combination. In interviews she late spoke of having appeared in film shorts for Warner Brothers in her youth, though I have located no specifics. IMDB has her appearing in an Our Gang short at age two, which I call highly unlikely, as her family wouldn’t move to Hollywood until several years after that.

But the Kenneys were in L.A. by June’s teen years. She attended the Hollywood Professional High School, and the Meglin School of Dance, which also turned out Shirley Temple and Judy Garland. Her after school job was as an usher at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. By her late teens she was appearing in local theatre, in productions of Stars and Types of 1949, Stage Door (1950), Sky High (1951), and Happy Time (1953).

Kenney’s screen career lasted just about a decade (1952-62), with but one later credit. She started out with minor mainstream credits, with guest shots on TV shows like Boston Blackie and The Loretta Young Show, and walk-ons in the films Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952) and Sweethearts on Parade (1953). Her real claim to (belated) fame came in starring parts in B and sub-B exploitation and horror films by the likes of Roger Corman and Bert I. Gordon. These classics include Teenage Doll (1957), Sorority Girl (1957), The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent (1957), Hot Car Girl (1958), Attack of the Puppet People (1958, arguably her best known), Earth vs. The Spider (1958), The Cat Burglar (1961), Bloodlust (1961), and Village of the Giants (1965). She’s also one of the girls in Jerry Lewis’s The Ladies Man (1961). Later TV appearances include Bonanza and Thriller with Boris Karloff.

By the early ’60s Kenney realized the error of her strategy of taking roles in low-budget pictures. It did NOT lead to bigger things. She was basically guilty by association, and could not find legit work. But she did have something to fall back on. She had been working in commercials and doing radio announcing right along. At this point, she focused on the radio work, becoming a familiar voice on local L.A. stations in the mid to late ’60s. In 1970, she moved to Nevada, and found work at stations there.

or more on the history of show business,please consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and pleasestay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.