Joan Diener

Joan Diener (February 24, 1930 – May 13, 2006) was an American actress and singer born in Columbus, Ohio, whose three-and-a-half-octave vocal range defined a Broadway career spanning from 1948 to 1992. She studied psychology at Sarah Lawrence College while simultaneously pursuing acting work as a student.

Diener made her Broadway debut in the 1948 revue Small Wonder, a production directed by Burt Shevelove, choreographed by Gower Champion, and featuring Tom Ewell, Alice Pearce, and Jack Cassidy. Two years later she appeared in Season in the Sun, a 1950 comedy written by Wolcott Gibbs, the theatre critic for The New Yorker.

Her career advanced significantly in 1953 when she was cast as Lalume, the seductive wife of the Wazir, in Kismet, a role that earned her a Theatre World Award. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson described her performance: "As an abandoned hussy, brazenly made up and loosely clad, Joan Diener looks like a fine case of grand arson and warms up the whole show." It was during the Kismet production that she met theatre director Albert Marre, whom she married three years later; the couple had a son, Adam, and a daughter, Jennifer. Diener subsequently reprised the role of Lalume in the West End production of Kismet alongside Alfred Drake and Doretta Morrow, both of whom had appeared in the original Broadway cast.

In 1958, Marre directed Diener in At the Grand, a Los Angeles musical adaptation of Vicki Baum's 1930 novel Grand Hotel, in which she played an opera diva who falls in love with a fraudulent baron. The production never reached Broadway, though it was later substantially revised and, directed by Tommy Tune, became the Broadway hit Grand Hotel.

Marre cast Diener as Aldonza in Mitch Leigh's Man of La Mancha, the role for which she became most widely recognized. The production opened Off-Broadway at the ANTA Theatre on November 22, 1965, and subsequently moved to Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre on March 20, 1968. Critics praised her portrayal unanimously, though she was not nominated for a Tony Award. She extended the role internationally, performing it in London, Amsterdam, and in French-language productions in Paris and Brussels, the Paris production starring Jacques Brel. She appears on the French cast recording L'Homme de la Mancha, released in 1968. In 1966, Diener performed material from the show on the Ed Sullivan program alongside Richard Kiley as Cervantes/Quixote and Irving Jacobson as Sancho Panza. In 1992, at age 62, she stepped into the role mid-performance during the Broadway revival starring Raúl Juliá, filling in for the second half of a performance after Sheena Easton collapsed.

Diener reteamed with Leigh as composer and Marre as director for Cry for Us All in 1970, a production that closed after nine performances. Despite the short run, New York Times critic Clive Barnes singled her out, writing that she "was outstanding" and possessed "a naturally expressive voice" while acting "with a natural subtlety." Marre directed her again in Home Sweet Homer in 1975, a production featuring Yul Brynner as Odysseus that closed on its opening night.

The film versions of her two signature stage roles went to other actresses — Dolores Gray in the screen adaptation of Kismet and Sophia Loren in the film of Man of La Mancha — and Diener did not develop a film career. Beyond Broadway and the West End, she performed in nightclubs including the Blue Angel in Manhattan, appeared in early television including a production of Androcles and the Lion on Omnibus, and worked in regional theatre. Joan Diener died of complications from cancer in New York City at the age of 76.