June Fairchild

Gazzarri Dancer on Hollywood A Go-Go

By mid-1965 Fairchild had been hired as a member of the Gazzarri Dancers on the syndicated variety show Hollywood A Go-Go after being recruited by the show's executive producer Al Burton. She remained on the show until its final episode, broadcast in February 1966.^[2][6]

While 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 episodes, including the one broadcast on November 6, 1965, in which Tommy Sands performed his record "The Statue", a song about the dance. Host Sam Riddle's introduction acknowledged Fairchild and Machu as the originators of the Statue dance, which had already spread to some public dance venues.^[6]

Years of success

During the 1960s, Fairchild lived with her then-boyfriend Danny Hutton, the lead singer of Three Dog Night, for several years.^[2] Despite some disagreement about the veracity of the claim,^[7] Fairchild was credited with conceiving the band's name, Three Dog Night.^[2]

Fairchild co-starred in Head, a vehicle for The Monkees, in 1968; in Drive, He Said, directed by Jack Nicholson; and Pretty Maids All in a Row, directed by Roger Vadim, in 1971; in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, which starred Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges, in 1974; and in the 1978 Cheech & Chong film, Up in Smoke, in which she appeared as a drug addict who snorts Ajax soap powder.^[2]

Decline

In her later life Fairchild lived on the streets of Skid Row, Los Angeles due to her addictions.^[2]

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.^[8] 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.^[2] 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.^[2] In 2002, Fairchild told the Los Angeles Times that her sentence had triggered a pledge of sobriety.^[2] Friends told reporters that Fairchild remained sober until her death in 2015.^[2]

She spent the later years of her life living in single-room hotels in downtown Los Angeles using her Social Security disability payments.^[2]