Joan Roberts

Joan Roberts (July 15, 1917 – August 13, 2012) was an American actress born Josephine Rose Seagrist in Manhattan, New York. She grew up in Astoria, Queens, and made her first stage appearance at age six. As a student at St. Patrick's Cathedral High School in Manhattan, she participated actively in dramatic productions, and she supplemented that experience with work in summer stock. In her youth she studied singing with Estelle Liebling, who also taught Beverly Sills.

Roberts made her Broadway debut in Sunny River, playing the role of Madeleine Caresse during the production's run from December 4, 1941, to January 3, 1942. In 1942 she appeared in Hit the Deck with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. Her Broadway career would prove to span six decades, from 1941 to 2001.

Her most celebrated credit came in 1943, when she originated the role of Laurey in the landmark musical Oklahoma! Roberts had initially auditioned for the role of Ado Annie, which ultimately went to Celeste Holm, but librettist Oscar Hammerstein cast her instead as the female lead. The production ran from 1943 to 1945. At the time of her death, Roberts was one of four surviving cast members from the original opening night production and the only one who had played a principal role, the others being George S. Irving, Marc Platt, and Bambi Linn. Celeste Holm, who had played Ado Annie, died several weeks before Roberts, also at age 95. In 2011, the University of North Carolina's School of the Arts mounted a production of Oklahoma! replicating the original Broadway staging, and both Roberts and Holm attended and were honored at an event connected to that production.

Following Oklahoma!, Roberts appeared in the musical Marinka in 1945 and starred in Are You With It? from 1945 to 1946. She then took on the role of Sara Longstreet in High Button Shoes, which ran on Broadway from 1947 to 1949. After a lengthy retirement on Long Island, New York, she returned to Broadway in 2001, playing Heidi Schiller in the revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies.

Beyond the stage, Roberts was a regular on The Texaco Summer Theater on CBS, which aired from July 4 to December 5, 1943, originally as a summer replacement for The Fred Allen Show. On December 19, 1966, she appeared in a CBS television production of Jack and the Beanstalk, and in 1977 she made an appearance as Jane in Season 6, Episode 15 of the series Emergency!. Her film credits include The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951) and Lovely to Look at (1952). She also appeared in documentaries about Oscar Hammerstein II and George Abbott, as well as in the film Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There. She released a recording titled Joan Roberts Sings of Faith, Hope and Love on Aardvark Records and authored the book Never Alone, published by McMullen Books Inc. in 1954.

In addition to her performing career, Roberts taught voice lessons and led workshops on singing and voice projection. Her papers from 1966 to 1993 are held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. She was married to Dr. John J. Donlon, who died in 1965, and they had a son, John J. Donlon, Jr. Roberts died of congestive heart failure on August 13, 2012, at the age of 95.