Joan Leslie

At 90 years old, Joan Leslie physical status not available right now. We will update Joan Leslie's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Joan Leslie (born Joan Agnes Brodel; January 26, 1925 – October 12, 2015) was an American actress, singer, and vaudevillian who appeared in films including High Sierra, Sergeant York, and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Early life

Joan Agnes Brodel was born in Highland Park, Michigan, on January 26, 1925, the youngest child of John and Agnes Brodel. John was a bank clerk, and Agnes was a pianist.

Betty (born 1919) and Mary Brodel (1916-2015), Joan's two older sisters, expressed their mother's musical aspiration and began to learn how to play instruments, such as the saxophone and the banjo, at an early age. They began performing in front of huge audiences in acts that involved singing and dancing. Leslie joined the pair at two and a half years old. She was soon able to play the accordion.

The Great Depression caused financial hardships for the family when her father lost his job in the mid-1930s. As a result, the three sisters performed as vain vainists on Saturday to help the family. They began touring in Canada and the United States. They were collectively known as The Three Brodels. Both Mary and Joan pretended to be older than they were at the time in an attempt to escape child labor laws at the time. Leslie was nine years old when she told child labor investigators that she was 16 years old. Joan was the scene stealer of the three sisters, due to her impersonations of actors such as Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, and Jimmy Durante. Leslie was born in an Irish Catholic family and attended Catholic schools in Detroit, Toronto, and Montreal. She came from a family of Irish descent.

Personal life

She married William Caldwell, an obstetrician, in March 1950. Patrice and Ellen, their identical twin daughters, were born on January 7, 1951. Both girls became teachers eventually.

During the 1952 presidential race, Leslie was a Democrat who endorsed Adlai Stevenson's campaign.

Leslie was designing clothes for her own eponymous brand. William died in 2000. Dr. William G. and Joan L. Caldwell Chair in Gynecologic Oncology at the University of Louisville was established a year earlier. Leslie has been an adopted alumna of the university for more than 32 years. She was a devout Catholic who was active in charitable work for the St. Anne's Maternity Home for more than 50 years.

Source

Early Hollywood career

When the three Brodel sisters were performing in New York in 1936, 11-year-old Leslie attracted the attention of a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). She was hired for six months with the studio, making $200 per week. She appeared in the film with other child actors such as Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, and Freddie Bartholomew.

Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor appeared in Camille (1936), a romantic romance starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor. Marie Jeanette, Taylor's younger sister, was not cast, and she was uncredited. MGM had trouble finding suitable roles for her, and she and Deanna Durbin were let go by the studio together. Leslie is back in New York, both as a model and on the radio. Mary, her older sister, had signed to Universal Studios at this time. Leslie and the rest of her family were back in Hollywood as a freelancer, working in various studios. She mainly worked for RKO Pictures.

Leslie was chosen to appear in Men with Wings (1938). Leslie's mother was lying about her daughter's age and that she was only 13 years old while filming. Wellman substituted Mary for the remainder of the filming schedule.

Leslie was first recognized in Winter Carnival (1939) as Betsy Phillips. Because the producer was looking for an actress with a southern accent, she was selected for the role. Joan Brodel was billed as Joan Brodel. She co-starred with Jimmy Lydon in Two Thoroughbreds, in which she played the daughter of a horse owner.

Leslie was chosen by a group of Hollywood directors as one of the first "baby stars of 1940" at age 15. Alice in Movieland, a Warner Bros. film short about a starlet trying to make her mark in Hollywood, was released that year. It was one of Jean Negulesco's first films directed in Hollywood and based on a Ed Sullivan tale.

Later career

Leslie was growing dissatisfied with the studio's offerings by 1946. She needed more challenging and mature roles in order to come out of her ingenue image, owing to her youth. Her decision was also based on moral and religious convictions. Warner Bros. was taken to court to get released from her employment with the help of her counsel, Oscar Cummings.

Leslie was given an award by the Catholic Theater Guild in 1947 for her "persistent refusal to use her gifts and art in film productions of questionable character."

As a result of all this, Jack Warner used his celebrity to blacklist her from other major Hollywood studios. She signed a two-picture film with Eagle-Lion Films in 1947. Repeat Performance (1947), a film noir in which she appeared as a Broadway actress, was the first one. The other was Northwest Stampede (1948), in which she appeared with James Craig.

She appeared in The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950), a film starring Robert Walker after her time with Eagle-Lion Films came to an end. MGM, the studio with which she started her film career in 1936, released the film.

Leslie decided to concentrate on raising her children in the early 1950s, which resulted in a more sporkular film career. She signed a short-term contract with Republic Pictures, the low-budget studio that mainly produced Westerns, in 1952. Flight Nurse (1953), one of the Republic's films, was one of her productions. Polly Davis, Leslie's narrator, was based on Lillian Kinkella Keil's time in the Air Force, and her character was based on her experiences. The newspaper Kingsport Times-News praised it as a "glorious woman who carried out extraordinary acts of mercy above the clouds in rescue of injured GIs from Korean battlefields." Her last film, The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), was released in film, but she kept making occasional appearances in television shows when her children were still attending classes. Since appearing in the television film Fire in the Dark, she resigned from acting in 1991.

Source

Awards and honors

• On October 8, 1960, Joan Leslie received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street.
• In 1999, she was one of the 250 actresses nominated for the American Film Institute's selection of the 25 greatest female screen legends to have debuted before 1950.
• On August 12, 2006, she received a Golden Boot Award for her contributions to Western television shows and movies.