Joan Chandler

Brunette, delicately featured leading lady who briefly made an impact through memorable back-to-back appearances in the films Humoresque (1946) and Rope (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.