Joy Hillie

Joy Hille was born Joy Darlene Light in 1931 to Shelby Jason Light and Marjorie Agee Light in Ohio. (Note that her name is spelled Hille, not Hillie, as appears on the credits for Pursuit of Loneliness.) Her father was a Congregational minister who moved to various small towns in the Midwest before taking the family to North Hollywood, California in 1953, while Joy was studying at Yankton College, South Dakota. Joy worked as a lab technician at Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital and met her first husband William G Smith. They had three sons, Wayne, Jay, and Dale. (Dale contributed to animation projects at Disney and elsewhere in several capacities.) Joy's second husband was Waldemar Hille, the editor of The People's Song Book, who died in 1995. Joy was discovered on the street by Laurence Thrush, the director of The Pursuit of Loneliness. She enjoyed the attention occasioned by the filming. As of 2016 she is still living in Long Beach, California.