Ex-Starlet’s Odyssey Takes a Wrong Turn --Toward Jail

One day after June Fairchild’s riches-to-rags life was chronicled in The Times, the woman who went from being a ‘70s starlet to living on the streets was sentenced to three months in jail Thursday for a 2-year-old probation violation.

The account of Fairchild’s life, in which she claimed to have overcome alcoholism, generated numerous offers of support from sympathetic readers. But on the day the story was published, Fairchild and a friend were picked up by police in Van Nuys on suspicion of having an open container of alcohol.

Officers ran a check on the 54-year-old woman and discovered a drunk-driving conviction with an unfulfilled community service sentence. She had been placed on probation but, according to her friend, abandoned the community service, saying she did not have enough money to take a bus to work.

Fairchild spent Wednesday night in custody and was sentenced Thursday by Glendale Superior Court Judge Michael Kanner to 90 days in the Twin Towers jail downtown.

Fairchild, who appeared in a dozen movies from 1968 to 1978, had more recently spent nights in a cardboard box on skid row. She appeared alongside screen legends such as Rock Hudson in “Pretty Maids All in a Row” and Mae West in “Sextette.” More than a dozen people who read of Fairchild’s dream of returning to the screen responded Wednesday and Thursday with offers of money, acting lessons and two roles in documentary films.

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Staff photographer Wally Skalij contributed to this story.