June Preisser TV Schedule

The offspring of a socially and politically prominent family -- the Landrieus of New Orleans, who have given their constituents mayors and United States senators -- June Preisser was born in 1920. Show business probably would not have been in her future had it not been for the death of her father just a short time later. In desperation to give her family something beyond the kindness of relatives to rely on, Preisser's mother pushed her two daughters into entertainment at an early age; child performers were all the rage at the time, and there was a lot of live entertainment in the 1920s through which children and families who were any good could earn a living.

June and her sister, under the constant pressure and guidance of their mother, were later to enter vaudeville as a dancing act, and the Preisser Sisters eventually made it to New York even attracted the attention of the New York Times in the mid-'30s. They were in the 1934 Ziegfeld Follies and worked in other top productions, including Cole Porter's You Never Know. They only broke up (following the closing of the Porter show) when Preisser's older sister left the act so that she could get married -- to the son of top presidential advisor Harry Hopkins, no less.

June Preisser continued as a solo act and later went to Hollywood, where she was signed to MGM. There she played a string of small roles as teenagers and college coeds in the company of stars such as Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. Preisser was never able to achieve more than supporting role status, however, in pictures such as the Andy Hardy movies, and by 1946 she was working for Sam Katzman at Monogram Pictures.

In the manner typical of Hollywood, she was cast as a slightly long-of-tooth teenager, as part of a quintet known as the "Teen Agers," alongside Frankie Darro and Noel Neill. As part of that group, she was in a string of eight movies through 1948. Preisser later returned to the stage very briefly, before retiring from performing at the end of the 1940s.