June Edna Fairchild was an American actress and dancer. Fairchild starred or co-starred in more than a dozen notable film roles before her addictions to drugs and alcohol effectively ended her professional acting career.
By mid-1965 Fairchild had been hired to become a member of the Gazzarri Dancers on the syndicated variety showHollywood A Go-Go after being recruited by the show's executive producer Al Burton. She remained on the show until it ceased production, with the final episode broadcast in February 1966. During her time on the show, June Fairchild and fellow dancer Mimi Machu created the Statue dance, a fad dance in which the dancers adopt stationary poses for a measure or two before shifting to new poses. The dance was performed on a number of Hollywood A Go-Go shows, including the show broadcast on November 6, 1965 in which Tommy Sands performed his record "The Statue", a song about the dance. In show host Sam Riddle's introduction to that performance, Mimi and June are acknowledged as the originators of the Statue dance, which had already spread to some public dance venues.
Years of success
During the 1960s, Fairchild lived with her then-boyfriend, Danny Hutton, the lead singer of Three Dog Night for several years. Fairchild was credited with conceiving the band's name, Three Dog Night. In the late 1960s and 1970s Fairchild had a successful acting career. She co-starred in Head, which was a vehicle for The Monkees, in 1968; Drive, He Said, which was directed by Jack Nicholson, in 1971; Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, which starred Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges, in 1974; and the 1978 Cheech & Chong film, Up in Smoke, in which she appeared as a drug addict who snorts Ajaxsoap powder.
Decline
In her later life Fairchild lived on the streets of Skid Row, Los Angeles due to her addictions. In 2001, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times ran a story about Fairchild's past career in Hollywood and her present life on the streets of Los Angeles. Fairchild was selling newspapers outside a Los Angeles courthouse at the time in an attempt to earn enough money for a single-room occupancy hotel room. On February 21, 2001, the same day that her story was published in the Los Angeles Times, police stopped her in Van Nuys for carrying an open container. A police officer recognized her picture from the newspaper and arrested her for failure to complete her community service from a past drunk driving conviction. Fairchild was sentenced to 90 days. In 2002, Fairchild told the Los Angeles Times that her sentence had triggered a pledge of sobriety. Friends told reporters that Fairchild remained sober until her death in 2015. Fairchild spent the later years of her life living in single-room hotels in downtown Los Angeles using her Social Security disability payments.
Death
Fairchild died from liver cancer at a convalescent home in Los Angeles on February 17, 2015, at the age of 68. Fairchild had divorced twice.
