Brunette, delicately featured leading lady who briefly made an impact
through memorable back-to-back appearances in the films
Humoreske (1946) and
Cocktail für eine Leiche (1948). Joan grew up in Butler,
Pennsylvania, where her family had a car dealership. Her mother was a musician. Joan studied dancing at the Bennington School of the Arts and was at one time an alumnus of the Martha Graham Dance Company. Very little is
known of her private life but at least one of her two sisters was also on the
musical scene. Joan decided on an acting career and made her bow on Broadway in 1944
as a juvenile in "The Late George Apley". Five years later, she
had a singing and dancing part, starring opposite
Ray Bolger in "Where's Charley?", replacing
Allyn Ann McLerie. In between work on
stage and screen she also featured in such episodic radio dramas as
'Theater Guild of the Air'. During the first half of the 1950's, Joan enjoyed a good run of critical plaudits for her performances in the comedy "My Three Angels" (with Walter Slezak),
and as Miranda in the American Shakespeare Festival staging of "The
Tempest" in Stratford, Connecticut.
Her last role of note came in 1959 (as replacement for the nominal
star Rosemary Harris), with
Joan as the female lead opposite
Jason Robards in "The Disenchanted", a
Budd Schulberg/ Harvey Breit play about
the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It
has been variously suggested that Joan's career may have suffered as a
result of blacklisting by HUAC, or because of a physical similarity to
another more established actress,
Diana Lynn. The fact remains, that she
managed to maintain a relatively busy schedule on the East Coast stage
throughout the 1950's. However, by 1962, she seems to have lost heart
and given up the profession. Apart from a few guest appearances in
early anthology TV and a couple of forgettable teen movies, there was
little else of note from this attractive and talented performer. She faded
into relative obscurity, living out the sadly short remainder of her
life in Manhattan.
