Joan Van Ark

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Joan Van Ark (born June 16, 1943) is an American actress best known for her appearance on the primetime soap opera Knots Landing as Valene Ewing.

She made her Broadway debut in Barefoot in the Park in 1966. She was a life member of The Actors Studio.

She was first nominated for the Best Featured Actress in a Play for the revival of The School for Wives in 1972, and then for 13 seasons on Knots Landing (1979–92).

She was named Best Actress in 1986 and 1989 for her work in this role.

She left the show in 1992 but returned for the final episode of the series in 1993 and 1997. Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac.

She received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination in 1985 as the host of the Tournament of Roses Parade on CBS.

She appeared on the soap opera The Young and the Restless from 2004 to 2005.

In an episode of the new Dallas series in 2013, she reprised her role as Valene.

Early life and education

Van Ark was born in New York City to Dorothy Jean Van Ark (née Hemenway) (1917-1983), and Carroll Van Ark (1897-1972), an advertiser and public relations specialist with Dutch ancestry from Holland, Michigan. Carroll Van Ark's paternal grandfather was an immigrant from The Netherlands. Both parents were writers. She and three siblings grew up in Boulder, Colorado.

Van Ark met and interviewed actress Julie Harris, who recommended that Van Ark attend Yale School of Drama, which Harris had attended in her early twenties as a student reporter at age 15. On a scholarship, Van Ark followed Harris' footsteps and went to Yale Drama. Van Ark was one of the few people admitted to Yale's graduate program without first having obtained an undergraduate degree. Van Ark was also the only female student on campus at the time, according to reports. She has only been a student for a year. Harris appeared on Knots Landing as Lilimae Clements, the mother of Valene Ewing's character.

Van Ark revealed the Julie Harris Scholarship, which gives year-long funding to an actor studying at Yale Drama School, after Harris died in 2013. Alec Baldwin, who starred Harris' son and Van Ark's brother on Knots Landing, made the first contribution. Yale Drama became tuition-free in 2021 and Yale University's David Geffen School of Drama was rebranded the David Geffen School of Drama.

Personal life

Van Ark married news reporter John Marshall, who later became a reporter for two decades at KNBC-TV and received both an Emmy and a Golden Mike Award on February 1, 1966. Van Ark and Marshall were high school sweethearts in Boulder, Colorado, and wed in Trier, Germany, where Marshall was stationed at the time in the Armed Forces Television Service at the time. The couple spent a European tour of destinations made popular by her nameake, Joan of Arc, for their honeymoon.

Vanessa Marshall, the couple's only child, is a voice actress, model, and singer. In 1997, mother and daughter appeared together in the play Star Dust at the Tiffany Theater.

Van Ark is a long-distance runner who has competed in 14 marathons and appeared on the front page of Runner's World.

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Career

Van Ark began her career at The Guthrie Theater in Molière's The Miser, in which she appeared opposite Hume Cronyn and Zoe Caldwell. Both Cronyn and Jessica Tandy were killed in the Guthrie, followed by the death of a Salesman. She began Corie in the national touring company of Barefoot in the Park after a season at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., directed by Mike Nichols. When she replaced Marlo Thomas, who had torn a ligament, she regained her role in the critically acclaimed London Company, she resurrects the role, and she appeared on Broadway again in 1966.

Van Ark and her new husband migrated to Los Angeles, where she began receiving television credits; however, she returned to Broadway in 1971, where she earned a Theatre World Award and was nominated for her role as Agnès in Molière's The School for Wives, directed by Stephen Porter.

In the horror film Frogs, directed by Ray Milland and Sam Elliott, which was theatrically released on March 10, 1972, Van Ark appeared opposite Ray Milland and Sam Elliott.

After receiving a Universal Studios contract, Van Ark co-starred with Bette Davis in The Judge and Jake Wyler, a 1972 telefilm and series pilot that was unable to be picked up by NBC. In the episode entitled "Radar's Report," Van Ark played Erika in M*A*S*H in 1973. Van Ark was also a regular castmember of the television sitcoms Temperatures Rising (1972–73) and We've Got Each Other (1977–78).

Van Ark, a late replacement for Mary Ure, appeared in Silia Gala, a revival of Pirandello's The Rules of the Game, which was also starring Glenn Close, who, in addition to appearing in a small part as a neighbor in the lead role of Silia. For Wives director Stephen Porter and Wives co-star David Dukes, a game reunited Van Ark with School. A Game production in 1975 was also broadcast on Great Performances as one of its Theatre in America picks.

In the science fiction film The Last Dinosaur, starring Richard Boone, was shot at Tsuburaya Studios in Tokyo and on location in the Japanese Alps. The film was supposed to be released theatrically but instead of finding a distributor, it was instead broadcast as a television film in February 1977.

In addition,, Van Ark was the voice of Spider-Woman in the short-lived 1979 animated series of the same name.

Valene Ewing, a well-known actress who appeared on television for many years, made her first appearance on Dallas in 1978 as Valene Ewing (originally as a one-time appearance). Van Ark kept a tight schedule and was flying a lot the week of her Dallas debut, as Dallas was being shot in Texas, and Estée Lauder's voiceover was in New York.

However, writers later developed the character into a couple of episodes, and Van Ark carried the Valene story into the long-running spin-off Knots Landing, in which she co-starred for thirteen of the show's fourteen seasons. She left in 1992, but she returned in May 1993 for its final two episodes. Her character married three times to husband Gary Ewing, played by Ted Shackelford, and she had two other marriages during the show's run.

Van Ark received two Soap Opera Digest Awards for Best Actress (1986, 1989) and was nominated six times during her thirteen years on Knots Landing. During the sixth year, Van Ark undoubtedly gained her greatest success as an actress, which culminated in an intricate plotline involving Valene's twin babies. Valene's disappearance prompted her to embark on a remarkable emotional journey and pilgrimage in which she left the cul-de-sac in California and morphed into the persona of a character from a book she had written. Val reveals that her babies are still alive in the 1984-1985 season finale, and that this episode marked the first time Knots Landing ever reached the top spot in the weekly Nielsen polls. "Knots Landing has the worst plots but the most cast, led by the incomparable Joan Van Ark as Valene," the TV Guide rated her in its 1996 issue. She directed two of the series' episodes later in the series, one in the last season when she was no longer a regular performer on the program.

In 1985, she hosted the Tournament of Roses Parade in CBS, earning a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Special Class Programs.

While co-working together on the series, Van Ark and KL co-star Michele Lee mirrored their characters' on-screen friendship. Van Ark recalled her role as Valene Ewing in the CBS mini-series Knots Landing: Back to the Cap, Cac, in May 1997, while in December 2005, she reminisced with the other cast members about the long-running CBS television series.

She appeared in Spin Doctors, an ill-fated pilot who was not picked up by NBC shortly after leaving Knots Landing.

Boys Will Be Boys, an ABC Afterschool Special that was a hit at the time (1994), which she appeared in and directed, was nominated for a Humanitas. Van Ark produced a documentary short on homelessness and domestic violence for the Directors Guild of America in 1997, and the work was nominated for an Emmy Award.

Gloria Fisher Abbott appeared on CBS television's The Young and the Restless from 2004 to 2005, but she stepped down and was replaced by Judith Chapman.

In Love Letters by John Rubinstein, as well as Edward Albee's award-winning Three Tall Women at the Bleecker Street Theatre, Van Ark appeared Off-Broadway opposite John Rubinstein and The Exonerated. In 2000, she appeared in Camino Real in Washington, D.C. Cyrano de Bergerac as Roxanne, Ring Around the Moon, Chemin de Fer, Heartbreak House, and As You Like It, which won the Los Angeles Drama Critics Award. Opposite David Birney appeared as Lady Macbeth in the Grove Shakespeare Festival's production of Macbeth, directed by Charles Johanson. Van Ark has appeared in three Williamstown Theatre Festival productions: The Night of the Ida (1986), Stephen Sondheim's 40th anniversary production of the classic Greek tragedies, and The Legend of Oedipus (1988), a five-hour, two-part revival conducted by Nikos Psachaulos, who was also Van Ark's acting professor while attending the Yale School of Drama, is also a three-part version.

Mrs. Fenway's Inception, one of the newly discovered Tennessee Williams' short plays, was on display at the Kennedy Center in 2004; the 2005 La Jolla Playhouse production of Private Fittings, directed by Des McAnuff; and a retrospective of A Beautiful Sunday for Creve Coeur on Sunday at the Hartford Stage in 2006.

My First Love, in which she plays the younger woman in a romantic triangle with Bea Arthur and Richard Kiley; Always Remember I Love You; Someone's In the Shadows is a film based on Stuart M. Kaminsky's "When the Sun Calls, in which she portrays a radio psychologist opposite Lloyd and James Read as Detective Lieberman.

Van Ark has appeared in a variety of guest appearances, including on Bonanza, Night Gallery, M*A*S*H, Petrocelli, Quincy, Barnaby Jones, and Rhoda (in which she played the ex-wife of Rhoda's husband). She appeared in three episodes of Medical Center, Cannon, and The Rockford Files, as well as four separate episodes of The Love Boat. She appeared on an episode of Wonder Woman with Ted Shackelford in 1978, and she's since then played on both Dallas and Knots Landing. The Nanny and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air are among the many guests on Nanny and Bel-Air at the National Innuence Centre.

Van Ark appeared on Howard Stern's show Son of the Beach as Ima Cummings, the mother of show regular BJ Cummings (played by Jaime Bergman). In an episode of FX drama series Nip/Tuck, she reunited with her Knots Landing co-star Donna Mills in 2008. She appeared on television in the same year as a network executive.

Van Ark was on display at the TV Land awards in April 2009, where Knots Landing was being honoured on its 30-year anniversary. Michele Lee, Donna Mills, Kevin Dobson, Ted Shackelford, Lisa Hartman Black, Constance McCashin, Don Murray, and Michelle Phillips, as well as Dallas/Knots Landing creator David Jacobs were among the Knots Landing actors on display.

She appeared in an episode of the animated comedy series Archer in 2011. In 2013, she appeared in an episode of the new Dallas series in which she reprised Valene Ewing's role. She appeared on RuPaul's Drag Race as a guest judge for the same year.

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