June Havoc, an actress and former child vaudeville star whose early life with her sister — legendary burlesque stripper Gypsy Rose Lee — and their ambitious stage mother was portrayed in the hit Broadway musical “Gypsy,” has died. She was 97.

Havoc died Sunday of natural causes at her home in Stamford, Conn., said her caregiver, Tana Sibilio.

“Gypsy,” the “musical fable” based on Lee’s memoir, opened on Broadway in 1959. It starred Ethel Merman as the overbearing stage mother, Mama Rose.

Although Havoc acknowledged the greatness of “Gypsy” as a musical, she always complained that it painted a misleading picture of her mother and distorted her own story.

“I cherish and am extremely proud of my childhood,” she told New York’s Newsday in 1995. “If you’d been a child — a phenomenon, really — someone who earned fifteen-hundred dollars a week on the Keith-Orpheum circuit, who was a headliner with all the applause and laughter and raised in that glorious vaudeville family, and then see yourself portrayed as a no-talent, whining nothing, well, it hurts terribly.”

Some biographical sources say she was born in Seattle. But, according to Sibilio, “Miss Havoc always said she was born in Vancouver.”

By 7, she was a vaudeville star performing on the same stages as Fanny Brice and Sophie Tucker.

“Baby June Hovick, the most adorable little creature in captivity,” read the caption on one vintage photograph.

“I loved being her,” Havoc told The New York Times in 1992. “I loved vaudeville.”

But during the 1920s, she knew the days of vaudeville were nearing an end.

As a teenager, Havoc married one of the boys in her act. During the Depression, she entered dance marathons to survive.

As June’s fame as a performer dimmed, her sister’s fame as a burlesque stripper grew.

Havoc used her 1930s experience in dance marathons to write and direct the 1963 Broadway play “Marathon ’33,” which starred Julie Harris. It received three Tony Award nominations.

Havoc’s Broadway acting credits include taking over the role of Miss Hannigan in the musical “Annie” in 1982.