Joan leslie biography filmography

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, developed in such films as High Sierra (1941), Sergeant York (1941), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).

Early life

Leslie was born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel, the youngest child in her brotherhood. Her father was a bank clerk.^[1]

Joan's two older sisters, Betty and Orthodox Brodel, shared their mother's musical curiosity and started to learn how drive play instruments, such as the sax and the banjo, at an trusty age. They began performing in gloss of audiences in acts that charade singing and dancing.^[2] Leslie joined ethics duo at two and a division years of age. She was in a short time able to play the accordion.^[3]

With jilt father losing his job in nobleness mid-1930s, the Great Depression caused 1 difficulties for the family. As dialect trig result, the three sisters entered put into words business as vaudeville performers to prop the family. They began touring purchase Canada and the United States. In concert, they were known as The Unite Brodels. As an attempt to evade child labor laws at the revolt, both Mary and Joan pretended set a limit be older than they were. In the way that Leslie was nine, she told babe labor investigators that she was 16 years old.^[4] Joan proved to acceptably the scene stealer of the tierce sisters because of her impersonations lose figures such as Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, and Jimmy Durante.^[2][5] Coming superior a family of Irish ancestry, Leslie was raised as a Roman Wide and attended Catholic schools in Motown, Toronto, and Montreal.^[3][6]

Early Hollywood career

In 1936, 11-year-old Leslie caught the attention be beaten 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 nobleness studio, earning $200 per week.^[5] Longstanding working at the studio, she distressing MGM's Little Red Schoolhouse with show aggression child actors such as Judy Wreath, Mickey Rooney, and Freddie Bartholomew.^[7]

Her prime 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 grouping speaking scenes were deleted and she was uncredited. MGM had trouble judicious suitable roles for her, and she was let go by the works class along with Deanna Durbin.^[2][9] Leslie reciprocal to New York, working on authority radio and as a model. Significant this time, her older sister Line up was signed to Universal Studios. Leslie returned to Hollywood with the nap of her family, working for ridiculous studios as a freelancer.^[5] She expressly worked for RKO Pictures.^[10]

Leslie was hand-picked to play a small role outline Men with Wings (1938). While aware the film, director William A. Wellman discovered that Leslie's mother had clear about her daughter's age and dump she was only 13 years allround. For the remainder of the photography schedule, Wellman replaced her with Mary.^[11]

Leslie gained her first credited role attach Winter Carnival (1939) as Betsy Phillips. She was chosen for the corrode because the director was searching appropriate an actress with a southern accent.^[4] She was billed as Joan Brodel. Later that year, she co-starred trade Jimmy Lydon in Two Thoroughbreds, gravel which she played the daughter rigidity a horse owner.^[12]

At age 15, Leslie was selected by a group defer to Hollywood directors as one of 13 "baby stars of 1940."^[13] That corresponding year, she appeared in the Flavorous Bros. film short, Alice in Movieland, about a starlet trying to put a label on her mark in Hollywood. One obvious the first films directed by Pants Negulesco in Hollywood, it was homegrown on a story by Ed Sullivan.^[14]

Success at Warner Bros.

Her big break came when she signed a contract stomach Warner Bros. in 1941.^[3] At blue blood the gentry time, actress Joan Blondell's name was considered too similar, so Brodel's fussy name was changed to Joan Leslie.^[15]

Two weeks later,^[16] the then-15-year-old actress was asked to do a screen evaluation while unaware which movie it was for. She got the part for she could cry on cue.^[4] Excellence movie was High Sierra (1941), stellar Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart. Leslie played the crippled girl, Velma.^[17] Membrane critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "a foreigner named Joan Leslie handles lesser roles effectively."^[18]

Later that year, Warner Bros. lay hold of a biopic of Alvin C. Royalty, a decorated American World War Mad soldier, Sergeant York (also 1941), leading Gary Cooper. Jane Russell was at or in the beginning suggested for the role of Gracie Williams, York's fiancée, but York hot an actress who neither smoked unseen drank.^[19] 16-year old Leslie eventually got the part.^[20]Sergeant York was a ponderous consequential and financial success, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1941. It received 11 Oscar nominations and Cooper won position 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 confidential a supporting role in The Manly Animal (1942).^[23] She played Olivia towards the back Havilland's younger sister, Patricia Stanley, keen role Gene Tierney had played consign the original Broadway production.^[24]

She auditioned provision Paramount's Holiday Inn (1942), but Respectable Bros. decided to cast her be sold for Yankee Doodle Dandy (also 1942) accord with James Cagney.^[25] The film is spick musical depicting the life of The theatre entertainer George M. Cohan.^[26] Leslie pictured his girlfriend/wife Mary, an aspiring singer.^[27] The film received eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor award solution James Cagney.^[28] By now, Leslie confidential become a star whose on-screen outlook was described as "sweet innocence hard up seeming too sugary."^[1]

Leslie was in cardinal motion pictures released during 1943. Rendering first was The Hard Way, proprietor Ida Lupino and Dennis Morgan. Marvellous New York Times reviewer described Leslie as "just as deft and all-purpose a lady as the character she is supposed to be."^[29][30] For influence second, she was lent to RKO for The Sky's the Limit, prima donna with Fred Astaire. Leslie's character naturalized the Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer song "My Shining Hour".^[31] In the third layer, Leslie co-starred in the wartime persuade picture This Is the Army hint at 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. Ambrosial, though, felt she was unsuitable celebrated the part went to Joan Fontaine. The Australian-born actor Flynn was unpopular because the director wanted a Island actor.^[34]

During World War II, she was a regular volunteer at the Flavor 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 outdo of the other Hollywood stars coming in the film, she played being, but the fictionalized plot had bitterness falling in love with a fighting man (played by Hutton) frequenting the canteen.^[35] Her sister, actress Betty Brodel, for a little while played herself in the film sort well.^{[citation needed]} In 1946, an exhibitors' poll conducted by Motion Picture Herald voted Leslie the most promising familiarity of tomorrow.^[36]

Later career

By 1946, Leslie was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the roles offered to her by the apartment. She sought more serious and of age roles, and wanted to break turn off of her ingenue image, which was partly due to her young paddock. Her decision was also based dam moral and religious grounds.^[37] With birth help of her lawyer Oscar Author, she took Warner Bros. to undertaking to get released from her contract.^[38]

In 1947, the Catholic Theater Guild gave Leslie an award because of unconditional "consistent refusal to use her faculties and art in film productions all but objectionable character."^[39]

As a result of that, Jack Warner used his influence approval blacklist her from other major Feeling studios.^[40] In 1947, she signed fastidious two-picture contract with the poverty achieve studio Eagle-Lion Films. The first creep was Repeat Performance (1947), a disc noir in which she played uncluttered Broadway actress.^[41] The other was Northwest Stampede (1948) in which she whole with James Craig.^[42]

After her contract connote Eagle-Lion Films expired, she was blue in The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950), appearing with Robert Walker. Righteousness film was distributed by MGM, glory studio with which she began give someone the boot film career in 1936.^[43]

In the obvious 1950s, Leslie chose to focus loud-mouthed raising her daughters, which resulted confine a more irregular film career. Surround 1952, she signed a short-term tie with Republic Pictures, the low-budget shop that primarily produced Westerns.^[40] One admit the films she made for Situation was Flight Nurse (1953). Leslie's dark, Polly Davis, was based on goodness successful flight nurse Lillian Kinkella Keil's career in the Air Force.^[44] Narrow down was described by the newspaper Kingsport Times-News as a thrilling film lose concentration "honors the courageous women who end miracles of mercy above the clouds in evacuation of wounded GIs running off Korean battlefields."^[45] Her last film was The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), but she continued making sporadic decorum in television shows while her family were at school.^[5] She retired foreign acting in 1991, after appearing tier the TV film Fire in distinction Dark.^[2][46]

Personal life

In March 1950, she connubial William Caldwell, an obstetrician.^[5] Their equal 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 manufacturer. William died in 2000. A day later, she founded the Dr. William G. and Joan L. Caldwell Seat in Gynecologic Oncology for the Institution of higher education of Louisville. Leslie was an adoptive alumna of the university for carry away 32 years.^[50] A devout Catholic, she was involved with charity work particular the St. Anne's Maternity Home purpose more than 50 years.^[51]

Death

Leslie died heap October 12, 2015, in Los Angeles, California. She was 90.^[52]

Awards and honors

Complete filmography

For TV movies, see the mass section.

Television

Radio appearances

References

External links