MoviesObituaryJoan Leslie obituary
Versatile actor from Hollywood’s golden ageFemale stars of Hollywood’s golden era were usually divided into sex goddesses, femmes fatales or nice girls. In line with the old sporting dictum, “nice guys finish last”, nice girls in movies seldom won the attention they deserved. Joan Leslie, who has died aged 90, was once described as “sweet innocence without seeming too sugary”. But she was versatile: she took roles in dramas, comedies, westerns or musicals, opposite actors such as Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Randolph Scott and Fred Astaire – she was a good enough dancer to partner Astaire in The Sky’s the Limit (1943). One of the best examples of her naive charm was as Mary, singing and dancing wife of the vaudevillian George M Cohan (Cagney) in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942).
She was born Joan Brodel in Detroit, Michigan, of devout Catholic parents, John Brodel, a bank clerk, and Agnes, a pianist. Taught and encouraged by their mother, Joan and her two older sisters, Betty and Mary, learned to play musical instruments at an early age. When their father lost his job during the depression, the three sisters, billed as the Three Brodels, became vaudeville performers to help support the family, while still at school.
Part of the act had nine-year-old Joan impersonating such stars as Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Durante. Many years later, in Warner Bros’ all-star showcase Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), Leslie mimicked Ida Lupino, with whom she had worked in her breakthrough movie, High Sierra (1941).
In 1936, an MGM talent scout spotted Joan in the sister act, and she was given a six-month contract with the studio. But all they offered her was a tiny uncredited part in Camille (1936), starring Greta Garbo.
Back in New York, Joan worked on radio and as a model, until she rejoined her sister Mary, who had been offered a contract at Universal Studios. Both sisters then appeared briefly in William Wellman’s Men with Wings (1938). Several small parts followed in minor films until both her luck and name changed.
In 1941, Warner Bros “introduced” 16-year-old Joan Leslie in Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra, as a young woman with a deformed foot. Bogart, in the role that transformed his career – he had previously played mostly one-dimensional villains – is an ex-con planning a heist who, attracted by the purity he sees in the girl, pays for corrective surgery to cure her limp, only to be rejected when he proposes to her. Leslie handles this bitter twist with remarkable skill.
She appeared in five further films in the same year, including The Wagons Roll at Night, where Bogart, as a circus owner, seems a little too keen to protect his kid sister (Leslie) from other men, and Sergeant York, in which, putting on a hillbilly accent, she played the fiancee of the eponymous first world war soldier hero (Cooper). She first refuses his marriage proposal, because “Folks say you’re no good, ’ceptin’ for fighting and hell-raising.” Apparently, she clinched the role because the real Sergeant York wanted someone who did not smoke, drink or swear.
She appeared as herself in Hollywood Canteen (1944), a glamorised version of the actual club where second world war servicemen could meet and dance with film stars. Among all the cameos by Warner Bros’ roster of stars, Leslie had the biggest role, as a GI’s dream date.
After another biopic, Rhapsody in Blue (1945), in which she was the fictionalised girlfriend of George Gershwin (Robert Alda), Leslie, while still only 21, became increasingly dissatisfied with always playing the hero’s wife or sweetheart and never the heroine. When Warner Bros refused to give her better material – typecasting was an essential part of the star system – she took the studio to court and managed to get released from her contract.
As a freelance, Leslie found more interesting roles, although still, with rare exceptions, the personification of goodness. In Born to Be Bad (1950), she is the born-to-be-good victim of Joan Fontaine, who schemes to take her fiance away from her, and in the title role of The Woman They Almost Lynched (1953), Leslie, as a genteel saloon owner, is at odds with a bandit (Audrey Totter). Nevertheless, in the final showdown between the two women, Leslie proves herself quick on the trigger.
In the André de Toth western Man in the Saddle (1951), Leslie finally shed her sweet persona, playing a woman who marries for money rather than wait for Randolph Scott, whom she really loves, to make good. In The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), returning to work with Walsh 15 years after High Sierra, she played a glamorous Honolulu heiress. It was her final film, although she continued to make guest appearances in TV series until 1991. After retiring from the big screen, she designed a line of clothes with her own brand.
In 1950, Leslie married William Caldwell, an obstetrician, with whom she had twin daughters, Ellen and Patrice. Caldwell died in 2000.
She is survived by her children and a sister.
Joan Leslie (Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel), actor, born 26 January 1925; died 12 October 2015
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