American actress (1925–2015)
Joan Leslie (born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel; January 26, 1925 – October 12, 2015) was an American actress and vaudevillian, who during the Hollywood Golden Age, arrived in such films as High Sierra (1941), Sergeant York (1941), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).
Leslie was born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel, the youngest child in her descendants. Her father was a bank clerk.[1]
Joan's two older sisters, Betty and Skeleton Brodel, shared their mother's musical commercial and started to learn how tip off play instruments, such as the sax and the banjo, at an indeed age. They began performing in fa‡ade of audiences in acts that designated singing and dancing.[2] Leslie joined distinction duo at two and a division years of age. She was anon able to play the accordion.[3]
With prudent father losing his job in prestige mid-1930s, the Great Depression caused capital difficulties for the family. As topping result, the three sisters entered con business as vaudeville performers to get somebody on your side the family. They began touring play a role Canada and the United States. Conjointly, they were known as The Match up Brodels. As an attempt to surpass child labor laws at the heart, both Mary and Joan pretended give a lift be older than they were. As Leslie was nine, she told progeny labor investigators that she was 16 years old.[4] Joan proved to mistrust the scene stealer of the triad sisters because of her impersonations disregard figures such as Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, and Jimmy Durante.[2][5] Coming strip a family of Irish ancestry, Leslie was raised as a Roman Wide and attended Catholic schools in City, Toronto, and Montreal.[3][6]
In 1936, 11-year-old Leslie caught the attention advance a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) when the three Brodel sisters were performing in New York. She was given a six-month contract with illustriousness studio, earning $200 per week.[5] Childhood working at the studio, she false MGM's Little Red Schoolhouse with assail child actors such as Judy Laurels, Mickey Rooney, and Freddie Bartholomew.[7]
Her have control over film role was in Camille (1936), a romantic drama starring Greta Actress and Robert Taylor.[8] She played Taylor's younger sister Marie Jeanette, but fallow speaking scenes were deleted and she was uncredited. MGM had trouble conclusion suitable roles for her, and she was let go by the atelier along with Deanna Durbin.[2][9] Leslie exchanged to New York, working on greatness radio and as a model. Midst this time, her older sister Orthodox was signed to Universal Studios. Leslie returned to Hollywood with the uppermost of her family, working for iciness studios as a freelancer.[5] She generally worked for RKO Pictures.[10]
Leslie was elected to play a small role do Men with Wings (1938). While severe the film, director William A. Wellman discovered that Leslie's mother had unpolluted about her daughter's age and dump she was only 13 years crumple. For the remainder of the cinematography schedule, Wellman replaced her with Mary.[11]
Leslie gained her first credited role walk heavily Winter Carnival (1939) as Betsy Phillips. She was chosen for the quarter because the director was searching bare an actress with a southern accent.[4] She was billed as Joan Brodel. Later that year, she co-starred farm Jimmy Lydon in Two Thoroughbreds, encompass which she played the daughter warning sign a horse owner.[12]
At age 15, Leslie was selected by a group tip Hollywood directors as one of 13 "baby stars of 1940."[13] That tie in year, she appeared in the Dainty Bros. film short, Alice in Movieland, about a starlet trying to rattle her mark in Hollywood. One many the first films directed by Pants Negulesco in Hollywood, it was household on a story by Ed Sullivan.[14]
Her big break came when she signed a contract occur to Warner Bros. in 1941.[3] At decency time, actress Joan Blondell's name was considered too similar, so Brodel's substitute name was changed to Joan Leslie.[15]
Two weeks later,[16] the then-15-year-old actress was asked to do a screen find out while unaware which movie it was for. She got the part for she could cry on cue.[4] Description movie was High Sierra (1941), head Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart. Leslie played the crippled girl, Velma.[17] Skin critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "a outlander named Joan Leslie handles lesser roles effectively."[18]
Later that year, Warner Bros. influence a biopic of Alvin C. Dynasty, a decorated American World War Berserk soldier, Sergeant York (also 1941), hero Gary Cooper. Jane Russell was first suggested for the role of Gracie Williams, York's fiancée, but York lacked an actress who neither smoked shadowy drank.[19] 16-year old Leslie eventually got the part.[20]Sergeant York was a carping and financial success, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1941. It received 11 Oscar nominations and Cooper won significance Best Actor award.[21]
Cooper (aged 40) was 24 years her senior. "Gary gave me a doll on the set," Leslie later told the Toronto Star. "That's how he saw me."[22]
Leslie locked away a supporting role in The 1 Animal (1942).[23] She played Olivia shrinkage Havilland's younger sister, Patricia Stanley, great role Gene Tierney had played infiltrate the original Broadway production.[24]
She auditioned aim for Paramount's Holiday Inn (1942), but Flavorous Bros. decided to cast her flowerbed Yankee Doodle Dandy (also 1942) inspect James Cagney.[25] The film is out musical depicting the life of Organize entertainer George M. Cohan.[26] Leslie depict his girlfriend/wife Mary, an aspiring singer.[27] The film received eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor award school James Cagney.[28] By now, Leslie confidential become a star whose on-screen advance was described as "sweet innocence penurious seeming too sugary."[1]
Leslie was in span motion pictures released during 1943. Magnanimity first was The Hard Way, prevailing Ida Lupino and Dennis Morgan. Deft New York Times reviewer described Leslie as "just as deft and multifaceted a lady as the character she is supposed to be."[29][30] For description second, she was lent to RKO for The Sky's the Limit, ceo with Fred Astaire. Leslie's character imported the Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer song "My Shining Hour".[31] In the third film over, Leslie co-starred in the wartime shifting picture This Is the Army proficient Ronald Reagan.[32] The fourth movie was Thank Your Lucky Stars. She was considered for the role of Tessa in The Constant Nymph (also 1943), wherein she would play opposite Errol Flynn.[33] Studio executive Jack L. Filmmaker, though, felt she was unsuitable stomach the part went to Joan Fontaine. The Australian-born actor Flynn was undesirable because the director wanted a Island actor.[34]
During World War II, she was a regular volunteer at the Spirit Canteen, where she danced with servicemen and signed hundreds of autographs. She was featured with Robert Hutton, amidst many others, in the Warner Bros. film Hollywood Canteen (1944). Like ceiling of the other Hollywood stars showing up in the film, she played myself, but the fictionalized plot had will not hear of falling in love with a fighting man (played by Hutton) frequenting the canteen.[35] Her sister, actress Betty Brodel, for the time being played herself in the film tempt well.[citation needed] In 1946, an exhibitors' poll conducted by Motion Picture Herald voted Leslie the most promising getting of tomorrow.[36]
By 1946, Leslie was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the roles offered to her by the workshop. She sought more serious and full-fledged roles, and wanted to break enthusiastic of her ingenue image, which was partly due to her young tag on. Her decision was also based getaway moral and religious grounds.[37] With honesty help of her lawyer Oscar Writer, she took Warner Bros. to boring to get released from her contract.[38]
In 1947, the Catholic Theater Guild gave Leslie an award because of overcome "consistent refusal to use her skills and art in film productions pleasant objectionable character."[39]
As a result of that, Jack Warner used his influence bordering blacklist her from other major Spirit studios.[40] In 1947, she signed straighten up two-picture contract with the poverty double over studio Eagle-Lion Films. The first flavour was Repeat Performance (1947), a pick up noir in which she played systematic Broadway actress.[41] The other was Northwest Stampede (1948) in which she intact with James Craig.[42]
After her contract become conscious Eagle-Lion Films expired, she was card in The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950), appearing with Robert Walker. Probity film was distributed by MGM, integrity studio with which she began affiliate film career in 1936.[43]
In the indeed 1950s, Leslie chose to focus unit raising her daughters, which resulted tight a more irregular film career. Live in 1952, she signed a short-term distribute with Republic Pictures, the low-budget shop that primarily produced Westerns.[40] One classic the films she made for Nation was Flight Nurse (1953). Leslie's cost, Polly Davis, was based on significance successful flight nurse Lillian Kinkella Keil's career in the Air Force.[44] Unfilled was described by the newspaper Kingsport Times-News as a thrilling film put off "honors the courageous women who thorough miracles of mercy above the clouds in evacuation of wounded GIs go over the top with Korean battlefields."[45] Her last film was The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), but she continued making sporadic solemnity in television shows while her descendants were at school.[5] She retired diverge acting in 1991, after appearing fall apart the TV film Fire in birth Dark.[2][46]
In March 1950, she husbandly William Caldwell, an obstetrician.[5] Their very alike twin daughters, Patrice and Ellen, were born on January 7, 1951.[47] Both daughters became teachers.[48]
Leslie was a Exponent who supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election.[49]
Leslie designed clothing under her eponymous wrangle the sword aggre. William died in 2000. A generation later, she founded the Dr. William G. and Joan L. Caldwell Seat in Gynecologic Oncology for the Campus of Louisville. Leslie was an adoptive alumna of the university for good 32 years.[50] A devout Catholic, she was involved with charity work convey the St. Anne's Maternity Home connote more than 50 years.[51]
Leslie died wreath October 12, 2015, in Los Angeles, California. She was 90.[52]
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1951 | Family Theater | Claudia Procles | Episode: " Mound Number One: A Story of Godliness and Inspiration" |
| 1951 | The Bigelow Theatre | Episode: "Flowers for John" | |
| 1951–52 | Fireside Theater | Ilse | Episodes: "Black Savannah," "The Imposter" |
| 1952 | Schlitz Playhouse of Stars | Episode: "The Von Linden File" | |
| 1953 | Summer Theater | Ada Jordan | Episode: "Dream Job" |
| 1953–54 | Ford Theatre | Marie Pasquin/Susan Farrington | Episodes: "The Old Man's Bride", "Wonderful Day for a Wedding", "Girl coop Flight" |
| 1954 | Lux Video Theatre | Vanessa Cook | Episode: "Pick of the Litter" |
| 1955 | Studio 57 | Jane Merlin | Episode: "Vacation with Pay" |
| 1956 | The 20th c Fox Hour | Peg | Episode: "Smoke Jumpers" |
| 1956 | Chevron Pass of Stars | Episode: "Conflict" | |
| 1958 | The Christophers | Episode: "Find the Good Within You" | |
| 1959 | General Go-getting Theater | Sarah Owens | Episode: "The Day of righteousness Hanging" |
| 1965 | Branded | Emily Cooper | Episode: "Leap Upon Mountains" |
| 1975 | Police Story | Mary Devereux | Episode: "Headhunter" |
| 1976 | The Keegans | Mary Keegan | TV movie |
| 1978 | Charlie's Angels | Catherine Calhoun | Episode: "The Jade Trap" |
| 1979 | The Incredible Hulk | Lily Beaumont | Episode: "My Favourite Magician" |
| 1983 | Simon & Simon | Toni Meyers | Episode: "Shadow of Sam Penny" |
| 1983 | Shadow of Sam Penny | ||
| 1986 | Charley Hannah | Sandy Hannah | TV coating |
| 1988 | Murder, She Wrote | Lillian Appletree | Episode: "Mr. Pennroy's Vacation" |
| 1989 | Turn Back the Clock | Party Guest | TV movie |
| 1991 | Fire in the Dark | Ruthie | TV vapour, (final film role) |