Joan Banks

Joan Banks (October 30, 1918 – January 18, 1998) was an American actress whose work spanned stage, film, television, and radio. Born with early artistic inclinations, she studied Russian ballet as a child and distinguished herself as a swimmer in high school. Her dramatic abilities earned her a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Art, and she also attended Hunter College.

Banks launched her professional career in radio at the age of 18, making her first appearance alongside Walter O'Keefe in 1936. That same year, she became the first female performer to serve as a "feminine stooge" on the Stoopnagle and Budd program. Her radio work continued across several decades, eventually including 33 episodes of CBS Radio Mystery Theater between 1974 and 1980.

Her Broadway career included the 1943 comedy The Snark Was a Boojum. On screen, Banks transitioned into Hollywood with supporting roles in films such as Cry Danger (1951) and Washington Story (1952), later appearing in My Pal Gus and Return to Peyton Place (1961).

Television provided Banks with some of her most recurring work. She made five appearances on Perry Mason, playing the murderer in four of them: Karen Alder in "The Case of the Negligent Nymph" (1957), Valerie Brewster in "The Case of the Fancy Figures" (1958), Mrs. Joseph Manley in "The Case of the Mythical Monkeys" (1960), and Rhonda Houseman in "The Case of the Left-Handed Liar" (1961), before returning in a non-murderer role as Nellie Conway in "The Case of the Woeful Widower" (1964). She also appeared in four episodes of National Velvet, two episodes each of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Hazel, and single episodes of I Love Lucy, Bewitched, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and several other series. In 1958, she played Clara Hood in the Wanted: Dead or Alive episode "Fatal Memory" and co-starred with her husband Frank Lovejoy in an episode of his series Meet McGraw on March 25 of that year.

Banks met Lovejoy while both were performing on the radio soap opera This Day Is Ours, and the two married and frequently appeared together in dramatic productions. They had two children, Judy and Steve. The couple had just completed a New Jersey stage run of Gore Vidal's The Best Man when Lovejoy died of a heart attack on October 2, 1962, at the Warwick Hotel in New York City. Banks died of lung cancer on January 18, 1998.