Joanne Dru

Joanne Dru (January 31 1922 – September 10, 1996) was an American film and television actress. She also was the elder sister of Peter Marshall, best known for being the host of Hollywood Squares.

Life and Career

File:SheWoreAYellowRibbonDVDCover.jpg

DVD cover for one of Dru's many western films She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) showing Dru and co-star John Wayne.

Born Joanne Letitia LaCock in Logan, West Virginia, Dru came to New York City in 1940, at age 18. After finding employment as a model, she was chosen by Al Jolson to appear in the cast of his Broadway show Hold Onto Your Hats. During this time Dru met and married the popular singer, Dick Haymes, and when they moved to Hollywood she found work in theater. Dru was spotted by a talent scout and made her first film appearance in Abie's Irish Rose (1946).

Over the next decade Dru appeared frequently in films and on television. Cast often in Westerns films such as Howard Hawks's Red River (1948), and John Ford's She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Wagon Master (1950). She also gave a well received performance in the dramatic film All the King's Men (1949), and co-starred with Dan Dailey in The Pride of St. Louis (1952) about major-league baseball pitcher Jerome "Dizzy" Dean. During this period she was divorced from Haymes, in 1949, and married John Ireland, who was also in Red River, less than a month later. Dru and Ireland got divorced in 1957.

She later lamented that she had been typecast in western films, commenting that once an actress became typecast, that was the end, and adding that she had never liked horses. She also appeared in the Martin and Lewis film 3 Ring Circus (1954). Her film career began to fade by the end of the 1950s but she continued working frequently in television, and played the female lead in the 1960 ABC sitcom Guestward, Ho!.

After "Guestward, Ho!" she appeared sporadically for the rest of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, with one feature film appearance, in Sylvia (1965), and eight television appearances. Although regarded as a capable and popular film actress, it was for her contributions to television that Dru was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Dru had five children, three with Haymes, and two with Ireland. She died in Los Angeles, California at the age of 74 from lymphedema, a disease "which is especially common after surgery or radiation therapy were used in combination to treat cancer", which indicates that she probably had undergone these treatments for cancer (likely breast cancer) prior to her death.

External links

• Joanne Dru at IMDb