Joey Heatherton

Davenie Johanna Heatherton, known professionally as Joey Heatherton, was born on September 14, 1944, in New York City and raised in Rockville Centre, New York, a Nassau County community near the city. Her nickname combined her first name, Davenie, and her middle name, Johanna. Her father, Ray Heatherton, was a Broadway performer who appeared in Babes in Arms and later became widely recognized in the New York area as the host of the children's television program The Merry Mailman. Her mother, also named Davenie, was a dancer who met Ray Heatherton while both were performing in Babes in Arms. Heatherton has a brother, Dick, born October 19, 1943, who became a disc jockey. She attended Saint Agnes Academy, a Catholic school, and began studying ballet at age six at the Dixon McAfee School of Dance. She subsequently studied under George Balanchine for four years before pursuing modern jazz dance, voice, and dramatics.

Heatherton's professional career began in childhood, with early television appearances on her father's program The Merry Mailman. At fifteen, in 1959, she joined the ensemble of the original Broadway production of The Sound of Music, also serving as an understudy. That same year she became a semi-regular on The Perry Como Show, where she played an exuberant teenager with a recurring crush on Perry Como, giving her her first sustained national television exposure. She also released her debut single, "That's How It Goes" backed with "I'll Be Seeing You," in 1959, though it did not chart. Three additional singles released over the following years similarly failed to produce a hit.

In 1960, Heatherton returned to Broadway to co-star in There Was a Little Girl opposite Jane Fonda, a production that had a short run. That same year she made her first dramatic television appearance, guest-starring as a wealthy, spoiled teenager on an early episode of Route 66. During the early 1960s she was frequently cast as a troubled teenager, a pattern attributed to her particular screen presence at the time.

Her film career began with Twilight of Honor in 1963, in which she played the young wife of an accused murderer alongside Oscar-nominated actor Nick Adams. The following year she appeared in Where Love Has Gone, a color melodrama based on Harold Robbins' roman à clef about the Lana Turner-Cheryl Crane-Johnny Stompanato manslaughter case, with Heatherton playing the daughter of the character portrayed by Susan Hayward. In 1965, she took her first film lead in My Blood Runs Cold, a William Conrad thriller in which she starred opposite Troy Donahue.

Beginning in the mid-1960s, Heatherton attracted considerable attention for her dancing on television, which drew both admiring and critical responses from viewers and commentators. In 1964 she appeared on The Tonight Show, where she coached Johnny Carson on dancing the Frug. Her guest appearance on the January 1965 premiere episode of the teen dance program Hullabaloo generated significant publicity, and she subsequently appeared on multiple episodes of the show, releasing a song titled "Hullabaloo" on Coral Records. She also became a recurring presence on The Dean Martin Show beginning with its premiere episode on September 16, 1965, at Dean Martin's invitation. From June to September 1968, she co-hosted Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers alongside Frank Sinatra, Jr., serving as a summer substitute for Martin's regular program. She additionally appeared on The Andy Williams Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show, and This Is Tom Jones, and made dramatic guest appearances on episodic series including Mr. Novak, The Virginian, The Nurses, I Spy, and It Takes a Thief. On November 7, 1965, she was a mystery guest on What's My Line?, the last live telecast on which Dorothy Kilgallen appeared.

From 1965 to 1977, Heatherton performed with Bob Hope's USO touring troupe, entertaining military personnel overseas for over a decade. Segments from those tours were broadcast as part of Hope's NBC monthly specials, and her appearances were regularly featured in the annual Christmas editions of those programs.

In the 1970s, Heatherton appeared in television commercials for RC Cola and Serta mattresses and continued performing in Las Vegas. She appeared in the 1972 film Bluebeard, starring Richard Burton in the title role, which contained her only onscreen nude scene. That same year she released her debut album, The Joey Heatherton Album. Its first single, a cover of Ferlin Husky's 1957 song "Gone," spent fifteen weeks on Billboard's Hot 100, peaking at number twenty-four, and reached number thirty-eight in Australia. A second single, "I'm Sorry," peaked at number eighty-seven. The album was reissued in 2004 with a cover photograph taken by Harry Langdon Jr. during the filming of Bluebeard. In July 1975, Heatherton headlined Joey & Dad, a four-week Sunday night summer replacement series for Cher's variety program, in which she performed alongside her father Ray. Each episode featured Ray Heatherton reflecting on life with his daughter while going through his attic. In 1977, she played Xaviera Hollander in The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, a Watergate-inspired film. In 1990, she appeared in John Waters' film Cry-Baby in a small role as a religious fanatic. In 1997, she appeared nude in an issue of Playboy.

In April 1969, Heatherton married Lance Rentzel, a Dallas Cowboys wide receiver, in New York City. In November 1970, Rentzel was arrested for exposing himself to a ten-year-old girl; he pleaded guilty, agreed to undergo psychiatric treatment, and received a suspended sentence. Heatherton filed for divorce in September 1971, and the divorce was finalized in 1972. On July 8, 1985, she was arrested and charged with interfering with a government agent's duties and disturbing the peace following an alleged altercation with a clerk at the U.S. Passport Agency office in Manhattan. She was acquitted of both charges in September 1986. Also in July 1986, she was arrested and charged with theft of services for refusing to pay a $4,906 bill from a Long Island hotel and spa where she had stayed in 1984, and she pleaded not guilty. On August 30, 1986, Heatherton was arrested for assault in Hillcrest, Rockland County, New York, after she stabbed her former boyfriend and ex-manager, Jerry Fischer, in the hand with a steak knife during an argument. Fischer was treated at a local hospital and released. Following her arrest, Heatherton identified herself to the responding officers, who initially did not believe her, prompting her to present her purse as verification of her identity.