Cause of death plane crash Role Actress Name June Thorburn | Years active 1952-1966 Occupation Actress | |
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Spouse Morten Smith-Petersen (m. ?–1967) Children Inger-Sheleen Christabel Smith-Petersen, Heather-Louise June Bryse-Harvey Siblings Keith Thorburn, Diana Thorburn Movies Tom Thumb, The Three Worlds of Gulliver, The Scarlet Blade, True as a Turtle, Touch and Go Similar People Jo Morrow, John Gilling, George Pal, Russ Tamblyn, Jack Hedley | ||
June Thorburn (8 June 1931 – 4 November 1967) was a popular English actress whose career was cut short by her death in an air crash.
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Early life
Thorburn was born in Karachi, British India. She was the eldest of three children, including her sister Diana and her brother Keith. Her full name was Patricia June Thubron Smith. She spent most of her schooldays in boarding schools in India, since her father was a colonel in the Indian Army and therefore her parents travelled a lot. When he retired from the military, they moved back to Britain.
June began writing plays from about the age of seven. Her grandfather (Sydney Thubron) who had also spent many years in India as a design engineer, building many important bridges, made early 'movies' and she was the star in several, the first being "Her Second Birthday", when she was only two years old.
Family
When she was 20 she left home and moved to London to pursue her career, where she met and married her first husband, Aldon Richard Bryse-Harvey. During their short and stressful marriage she bore one daughter in 1953, named Heather-Louise June. The marriage ended in divorce and June moved back to Hampshire, close to her family, for a couple of years until her career started to take off.
In 1957 she moved back to London, where shortly thereafter she met Morten Smith-Petersen, who subsequently became her second husband. She was married to him until her death in 1967. Together with Morten, she had a second daughter named Inger-Sheleen Christabel.
Career
She appeared in her first commercial film in 1952, and began to win leading roles, in British costume dramas such as Fury at Smugglers' Bay (1961) and The Scarlet Blade (1963). Her most notable film appearance was as the Forest Queen in Tom Thumb (1958). During the early 1960s, she also appeared regularly on British television.
Death
She was pregnant with her third child when returning to London from Spain on Iberia Airlines Flight 062 when it crashed at Blackdown Hill, Sussex, killing all 37 people on board.
