The Glass Ladder

The Glass Ladder is the autobiography of June, glamorous and beautiful star of the theatre's last decade of unrivalled ascendancy over the cinema. She takes the title of her book from her mother's saying that 'the stage is like a ladder made of glass - step too heavily on a weak rung and it splinters under your feet.' Although some rungs came close to cracking, the ladder never splintered for June, and the story of her climb to stardom makes fascinating reading.

It was June's mother, herself an actress, who recognised her potentialities and sent her to dancing classes - with Noël Coward and Ninette de Valois. And when June was chosen as a pupil by the great Anna Pavlova, a wonderful future as a ballet dancer was predicted for her.

In fact, one of her family's regular financial crises sent her to Paris at the age of thirteen to dance in the Folies Bergère. And in the twenties she became a star in the fabulous musical comedies and revues of that time. André Charlot, C.B. Cochran, Gertrude Lawrence, Evelyn Laye and Jack Buchanan were some of the people who had a hand in shaping her career, and with the coming of success and her love affair with 'Babe' Barnato, the millionaire racing driver, her life became full of names as glittering as the jewels they wore.

June tells the inside story of her appearances before the Prince of Wales and of her parties with him and his brothers; of her friendship with Mayfair's own novelist, Michael Arlen; and of her marriage to one of the wealthiest young men of the century, Lord Inverclyde, and the subsequent sensational divorce case.

The Glass Ladder is not only a very personal self-portrait; it is also an intriguing record of an almost legendary era in London, New York and Paris by a very captivating woman who now looks back with gaiety and wit.

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