June Fairchild

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June Edna Fairchild (September 3, 1946 - February 17, 2015) was an American actress and dancer. Fairchild starred or co-starred in more than a dozen major notable film roles before her addictions to drugs and alcohol effectively ended her professional acting career.

Video June Fairchild

Life

Fairchild was born June Edna Wilson on September 3, 1946, in Manhattan Beach, California. Her father was a musician who specialized in writing gospel songs and music. Fairchild was raised in Manhattan Beach and graduated from Aviation High School in Redondo Beach. She was hired as a member of the Gazzarri Dancers on the 1960s syndicated variety show, Hollywood A Go-Go, after graduating from high school.

Year of success

During the 1960s, Fairchild lived with her then-boyfriend, Danny Hutton, the lead singer of Three Dog Night for several years. Fairchild conceived the band's name, Three Dog Night, after reading that indigenous Australian aborigines judged the coldness of a night by the number of dingos they had to curl up with to stay warm.

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 Ajax soap 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 prison. In 2002, Fairchild told the Los Angeles Times that her prison 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.

Maps June Fairchild

Death

Fairchild died from liver cancer at a convalescent home in Los Angeles on February 17, 2015, at the age of 68. She was survived by her daughter, Megan Mull; a 2-month-old grandson; and her brother, Jerry Wilson. Fairchild had divorced twice.