June Knight Experiments (1937) 🇬🇧

Apart from a fleeting glimpse of June Knight on a railway platform this interview was my first meeting with the amazing girl who emerged from paralysis into dancing stardom, who had the temerity to say the polite equivalent of "Nerts!" to beckoning Hollywood after she made a great hit in a New York show, "Jubilee," and got all the film city executives scrambling for contract forms.

by Victor E. Decke

Yes, June just tossed those golden locks of hers, stamped a pretty foot, packed her bags and set sail for England armed with a motoring map of the island, a school history of England, a whole lot of pretty clothes, and (oh, yes) a contract to star with Michael Bartlett in The Lilac Domino as well as a contract to star in the stage revue Going Places.

Hollywood had rather disappointed her. True, at the age of seventeen she had doubled for Garbo in the sensational Jezebel dance in Mata Hari, but the Metro contract on which she had placed a lot of faith brought nothing more than that and not a totally satisfactory appearance with Bob Taylor in Broadway Melody of 1936.

Besides, unlike most Hollywood stars, she was born in the town and had probably got to see through it at the age of three or thereabouts.

Going Places brought June the greatest individual success the West End has had for many a year, though the mediocrity of the rest of the show forced a shortish run. But the acclamations of the Press spurred her on, so that after she completed The Lilac Domino she went immediately into rehearsals of her next stage show, And On We Go. The same phenomenon recurred; Miss Knight, to use a new accepted academic phrase, had both the Press and the public standing on their ears, and again poverty of material was loudly bewailed with a disastrously short run as the result.

"So what are your plans now?" I asked, after the first formalities had been exchanged and after I had mentally kicked myself that — after all these months — this was the first time I had met June Knight.

"Well," she said, with the air of someone saying that they were going to a cafe round the corner for a cup of tea, "I'm giving up all this" (she waved an arm at the room we were in) "and I'm going back to school."

Film stars are entitled to their little joke just like you or I, I thought, and laughed punctiliously.

The fine arcs of eyebrows became a straight line and a frown. " But I mean it." she said.

"I'm going off to Paris in a fortnight's time," she explained, "and I'm going to learn singing. I mean serious singing — opera. My manager is there now fixing things up for me. I shall be there for a few months. I shall live with a French family who will know me only by my real name — Margaret Rose Valliquette. I am allowing myself five pounds a week to live on, and hope to keep strictly to this budget; the singing lessons of course will be paid for separately, as they will cost quite a lot. But I want to live the life of a student with either a reasonably generous allowance or a decent scholarship."

"And the social life?" I asked, glancing at the basket of orchids in a corner of the room, and at the row of invitation cards over the fireplace.

"Forget it," Miss Knight advised me, " I’m going there to work and I mean it."

"Do you want to sing opera in films?"

"I should like to. I don't want to give up my dancing or singing light numbers, but I should like to intersperse a little serious singing now and then. The easiest way to explain what I want to do is to say that I want to do with my singing what Fred Astaire has done with his dancing in his new film, “Shall We Dance?”

He sticks to his line there, but he introduces some serious dancing on top of it. I thought it was a swell idea."

"Don't you think that you may be wrong to neglect your public all this while?"

"I have a solution for that too. I am going to emerge out of obscurity once a week and become June Knight again for an hour or so. Disguised as June Knight, I am going to broadcast songs over the air — in French. And that's another thing that I hope this trip will do for me — perfect my French. I've always wanted to do that, as I am half French myself."

"And now suppose." I posed the question, "that one week you find you exceed your budget, won't it be a temptation to go to the bank and draw a cheque?"

"No sir!" smiled June Knight, "you don't know my strength of character. I'll just go short on the lunches and that's all. And you can't imagine what a kick I'm going to get out of living that way."

(Did I say elsewhere that these stars do themselves proud?)

"Another thing I want to do," June dropped the bombshell with superb calm, "while I'm in Paris is to study painting if I can fit in the time. I've always played around with paints and chalks just for the fun of the thing, and now I'd like to take it seriously."

No, frankly, and my face is red at the thought of June reading this confession, this statement got me just a little bit suspicious. Here was this cool, collected, lovely and startlingly young girl sitting before me. That she could sing extremely well I knew — for I had heard her. That she could dance divinely is an accepted doctrine, to which I subscribe as heartily as anyone else.

That she has a sincere interest in literature was witnessed by a hasty glance at her bookshelves with Zweig's psychological-historical studies. Thomas Mann's Stories of Three Decades and the like. Was there no limit to talent? Did not three out of every four film stars claim art pretensions? I took a plunge. I admit it now, it was an unfair plunge.

"May I see some of your drawings? " I asked.

I was licked from the start. Absolutely.

"Why surely," she said, her eyes lighting with pleasure, "though you'll probably think they're awfully bad. I've never had a lesson in my life."

She led me into a cheery little dining-room and there sure enough were dozens of drawings round the walls with her signature. My shame was terrific; I hope she didn't notice it.

I am no art critic, but like the gentleman with the walrus moustaches, I know what I like And I liked these. I don't say that June Knight is a female Raphael; but I do say that these drawings certainly warrant her taking up the hobby seriously.

Considerably humbled, I went back to the sitting-room, where June brought out the original motoring map she had carried across the Atlantic with her. On it were marked all the places in England, Scotland and Wales that she had visited. She was very proud of this, and it is not every visiting celebrity who gets so complete a picture of Britain as that which June will carry away with her.

She has been as far south as Lynmouth in the west and Rye in the east. She has been north as far as Edinburgh. Glasgow, Liverpool, Blackpool, Sheffield — industrial centres, funny little English villages, all these she toured industriously with a sincere thirst for knowing the country that had received her so gladly.

Back we went to talking shop.

"And when the Paris trip is over, what then?"

"I'm coming back to London. London's kind of got under my skin. I've had offers from Hollywood — I had a cable only yesterday — but I don't want to leave London a loser. You see, I've done two shows here, both of which have had really bad luck, in spite of the fact that so far as I am concerned I made a success in both. Before I go back home I want to have the satisfaction that I really clicked in London in a show that was a success all round. I don't want to go back without having that satisfaction. Besides I like London. I've had such fun here.

"I must tell you a story about Coronation night. I went to see Maytime with a friend of mine, and when we came out we could not possibly break through the crowds so we decided to stay right there and join in the fun. Well, we started off by buying a bag of confetti each and solemnly standing in Piccadilly Circus and emptying the confetti over each other's heads.

"Finally, we fought our way to a restaurant. The doorman recognised me and seeing the confetti all over us, stepped forward gallantly and whispered in my ear: 'May I be the first here to congratulate you, Miss Knight?' Don't you think that was pretty cute? I was quite surprised that the next day's papers didn't carry an account of my 'marriage.'

"So I am going to have at least one more try in the West End to see if my luck's going to change. They say third time lucky, don't they? And I shall probably make another film while I am here. I am very pleased with The Lilac Domino — and I hope the public will like it as much as I do."

June Knight goes international — Scottish as regards to trews and all American for the sports coat and cap.

Collection: Picturegoer Magazine, July 1937