June Thorburn Profile

June Thorburn

	(Tricia Thubron)
8 June 31	is born in Kashmir, India. Her father is a Colonel in the Indian Army, so she spends most of her childhood in boarding schools in India, many of which do not feed their wards well, causing her to climb out of the window at night to eat berries.
	is a tomboy and has a mind of her own, albeit a very creative one. She gets into trouble in school, going to 13 different schools in India and being expelled from 10 of them.
	despises Latin and forges a letter from her father explaining that he thinks Latin a “dead language” and that he does not want her to take the class. By the time the letter is found to be a forgery, it is always too late for her to start the class.
38	starts writing plays and acting in them for her friends and family
	learns to ski in the Himalayas and enters many competitions as a child
	enters an adult women’s skiing competition and wins. It takes a while for them to finally award her the trophy because they say she is a child and, therefore, does not qualify to win a women's competition.
	the Indian army is disbanded, and she goes back to England with her parents and siblings and lives in Fleet, Hants
51	moves to London
52	works at Battersea Funfair selling programs when she meets and marries Aldon Richard Bryse-Harvey
?	makes her West End stage debut in London in Red Letter Day
53	is 6 months pregnant but not showing and gets her first big break in her first film, Pickwick Papers, a comedy by Charles Dickens, in which she plays Arabella, the love interest. One scene requires her to elope and fall into a pond. The scene has to be shot 6 times, each time requiring her to be dragged out of the pond and dried off.
1 May 53	her first daughter is born
53/54	gets a part in a couple of episodes of "Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Presents" TV show. She initially meets Fairbanks one day when she faints as he is passing by; she is pregnant at the time. They develop a friendship that lasts the rest of her life, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. eventually becomes the godfather to her daughter.
c. 55	is a big hit on British TV in a play based on Mazo de la Roche's Whiteoak stories
October 55	attends the London premiere of Touch and Go with Heathcliff, a black cat. The cat wears a diamond star brooch, diamond clips, and a couple of bracelets with a total value of $20,000.
November 55	is among the stars presented to the Queen at the Royal Film Command Performance in London. Others in the row are Anna Neagle, Janette Scott, and Peter Ustinov.
54/55	divorces Bryse-Harvey
58	moves back to London and rents a flat in what is currently “Bohemian” Hampstead, and which becomes her residence until her death
59	marries Norwegian Morten Smith-Petersen, her second husband
January 61	is riding in a sedan chair carried by students from London's Imperial College in a publicity race from St. Paul's Cathedral to Fleet Street
25 May 61	attends the premiere of Don’t Bother to Knock at the new ABC cinema in Sheffield
	attends the Cannes Film Festival with the cast from Don't Bother to Knock, a mildly entertaining bedroom farce starring Richard Todd, Elke Sommer and Nicole Murray
24 May 62	visits the fun fair at Battersea Festival Gardens, London, with other British stars
3 September 62	attends a charity race at the racecourse in York, North Yorkshire, together with fellow actresses Rita Tushingham, Liz Fraser, and Carole Lesley
13 September 62	attends a Variety Club horse race meeting at the Sandown Park Race Course, Surrey, with her husband
July 63	attends a garden party given by President John F. Kennedy and Ireland’s president, de Valera, during Kennedy’s visit to Ireland
10 May 64	her second daughter is born
66	returns to the theatre in London in George Bernard Shaw's witty play Man and Superman at The Garrick Theatre
4 November 67	dies at age 36 in a plane crash in England when the Iberia Airlines Caravelle in which she is traveling from Malaga to London crashes into the side of Blackdown Hill. The jetliner crashed near Haslemere as it was making its final approach to London. It tore into a 100-foot oak tree, gouged windows out of a farmhouse, and came to rest in buckled fragments halfway up a 900-foot hillside. She was three months pregnant. Smith-Petersen and two daughters survive.
	the authorities believe that the jet, with 37 passengers and crew members, exploded in flight, given the wide radius over which shattered fragments of the aircraft are found. The airlines claim that the altimeter in the airplane was faulty (they were in the process of replacing all the altimeters in their planes) and it registered that the airplane was much higher in the air than it really was, so they flew straight into the side of the hill, leaving a quarter-mile scar on the hillside.
6 November 67	her London agent, Al Parker, confirms that she perished

Sources: The New York Times, Winnipeg Free Press, Chronicle-Telegram, The Constitution Tribune, The Fresno Bee, Picture Show Who's Who, Picture Show Annual 1954, Screen World, The Post, The Frederick Post, The Mansfield, Ohio News Journal, www.BritishPathe.com, www.IMDb.com
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Links: Filmography