Joan Davis

 Joan Davis (June 29, 1912 – May 22, 1961)

Davis was a comedic actress whose career spanned vaudeville, film, radio, and television. Remembered best for the 1950s television comedy I Married Joan, Davis had a successful earlier career as a B-movie actress and a leading star of 1940s radio comedy. Davis had been a performer since childhood. She appeared with her husband Si Wills in vaudeville. Davis' first film was a short subject for Educational Pictures called Way Up Thar (1935), featuring a then-unknown Roy Rogers. Educational's distribution company, Twentieth Century-Fox, signed Davis for feature films. Tall and lanky, with a comically flat speaking voice, she became known as one of the few female physical clowns of her time. Perhaps best known for her co-starring turn with Bud Abbott and Lou Costello in Hold That Ghost (1941), she had a reputation for flawless physical comedy. Davis then began a series of shows that established her as a top star of radio situation comedy throughout the 1940s.

Davis was the star of the unsold pilot Let's Join Joanie, which was recorded in 1950. The proposed series was a television adaptation of Leave It to Joan. When I Love Lucy premiered in October 1951 on CBS Television and became a top-rated TV series, sponsors wanted more of the same with another actress who was not afraid of strenuous physical comedy. I Married Joan premiered in 1952 on NBC, casting Davis as the manic wife of a mild-mannered community judge (Jim Backus), who got her husband into wacky jams with or without the help of a younger sister, played by her real-life daughter, Beverly Wills. On May 22, 1961, Davis died of a heart attack at the age of 48 at her home in Palm Springs, California. She is interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, CA.