June Edna Fairchild (born June Edna Wilson; September 3, 1946 – February 17, 2015) was an American dancer and actress. Fairchild starred or co-starred in more than a dozen film roles before her addictions to drugs and alcohol effectively ended her professional acting career.
By mid-1965 Fairchild had been hired as 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 its final episode, broadcast in February 1966.[1][5]
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.[5]
During the 1960s, Fairchild lived with her then-boyfriend Danny Hutton, the lead singer of Three Dog Night, for several years.[1] Despite some disagreement about the veracity of the claim,[6] Fairchild was credited with conceiving the band's name, Three Dog Night.[1]
In her later life Fairchild lived on the streets of Skid Row, Los Angeles due to her addictions.[1]
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.[7] 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.[1] 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.[1] In 2002, Fairchild told the Los Angeles Times that her sentence had triggered a pledge of sobriety.[1] Friends told reporters that Fairchild remained sober until her death in 2015.[1]
