Joanne Dru

Joanne Dru, born Joan Letitia LaCock on January 31, 1922, in Logan, West Virginia, was an American actress whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television. She died on September 10, 1996, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 74, from a respiratory ailment that developed from lymphedema, a condition her brother attributed to chemotherapy she had received over her lifetime. Her ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.

Dru relocated to New York City in 1940 at the age of eighteen, where she initially worked as a model. Her Broadway career, which extended from 1940 to 1955, included appearances in the melodrama Deadfall and the musical Hold on to Your Hats. It was Al Jolson who selected her for the cast of Hold on to Your Hats, marking an early professional milestone. After transitioning to Hollywood, she was spotted by a talent scout and made her film debut in Abie's Irish Rose in 1946.

Her film work in the late 1940s and early 1950s established her as a prominent presence in westerns. She appeared in Howard Hawks's Red River in 1948 and in two John Ford productions, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon in 1949 and Wagon Master in 1950. Beyond westerns, Dru delivered a notable dramatic performance in All the King's Men in 1949, a film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year she appeared opposite Edmund O'Brien in the crime noir 711 Ocean Drive, playing a gangster's unhappy moll. She co-starred with Dan Dailey in The Pride of St. Louis in 1952, a film centered on major-league baseball pitcher Jerome "Dizzy" Dean, and appeared in the James Stewart drama Thunder Bay in 1953 and the Martin and Lewis comedy 3 Ring Circus in 1954.

As her film output slowed toward the end of the 1950s, Dru shifted her focus to television. Her most prominent television role was Babs Hooten on the ABC sitcom Guestward, Ho!, which ran from 1960 to 1961. Following that series, her appearances became more sporadic, including one feature film, Sylvia, in 1965, and eight television appearances through the first half of the 1970s. For her contributions to the television industry, she received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Dru was the elder sister of Peter Marshall, the actor and singer best known as the original host of the game show Hollywood Squares. In 1941 she married vocalist and actor Dick Haymes, with whom she had three children before their divorce in 1949. Less than a month after that divorce, she married actor John Ireland, her co-star in both Red River and All the King's Men. That marriage ended in 1957. She had no children from her marriage to Ireland or from two subsequent marriages. Politically, Dru was a staunch Republican who supported Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election and appeared at a 1968 fundraising event for Richard Nixon.