VAUDEVILLE: Saga of Dainty June

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Losers Win. In the race for the winner's purse, dancers wiped out their rivals by slipping them Mickeys or Ex-Lax. Old-timers advised first-timers to don wet stockings (it gave them blisters); women slugged other women cold. Men and women huddled and sometimes made love while wrapped in blankets. "I never did understand the spectators," says June. "They neglected home, children, work. They were drawn to us by the climate of cruelty in the world. Our degradation was entertainment; sadism was sexy; masochism was talent."

Dainty June danced 3,000 hours—four straight months—and came in for a large share of the prize money. After the promoters docked her for laundry, food, extra coffee, she pocketed only $50. But, she felt, she had also won more—a human test.

She was 14. Ahead lay still more prickly years, not mentioned in Early Havoc, when June bounced from other marathons to modeling, from soap operas to summer stock, before she broke into lights. June's final judgment of her Early Havoc: "I had learned a lot. I would be careful of everybody and everything . . . You can take the girl out of vaudeville, but you can't take the vaudeville out of the girl."