European Film Star Postcards: Joan Leslie

American actress Joan Leslie (1925-2015) starred in over 30 films. Her breakout role came at the age of 15 when she appeared as the crippled girl Velma in High Sierra (1941) with Humphrey Bogart. In the following years, she starred alongside Gary Cooper in Sergeant York (1941) and James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). After 1956, she appeared in television series.

Vintage postcard, no. 3106-78. Photo: Warner Bros.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 252. Photo: Warner Bros.

West German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 214. Photo: RKO Radio Film.

A breakout role at the age of 15

Joan Leslie Caldwell was born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel in Detroit, Michigan in 1925. She was the youngest child of John and Agnes Brodel. John was a bank clerk and Agnes was a pianist. Growing up in Highland Park, Leslie was on stage as a three-year-old and learnt various instruments from her mother. When her father lost his job during the Great Depression, Brodel toured with her two older sisters under the name The Brodel Sisters on Vaudeville stages in the United States and Canada.

While Mary played the saxophone and Betty the piano, Joan was a wiz on the accordion and the banjo. Joan proved to be the scene stealer of the three sisters because she impersonated figures such as Katharine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Maurice Chevalier, and Jimmy Durante. One night, during a performance at the Paradise Club in New York, 11-year-old Joan was singled out by an MGM talent scout and promptly signed for six months with a salary of $200 a week. Her two sisters Mary and Betty Brodel both also went on to have brief film careers, but they were far less successful than their youngest sister.

Her first role was an uncredited part as Robert Taylor's younger sister Marie Jeanette in George Cukor’s romantic drama Camille (1936), starring Greta Garbo. While working at the studio, she attended MGM's Little Red Schoolhouse with other child actors such as Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, and Freddie Bartholomew. MGM had trouble finding suitable roles for her, and she was let go by the studio along with Deanna Durbin. Leslie returned to New York, working on the radio and as a model.

During this time, her older sister Mary was signed to Universal Studios. Leslie returned to Hollywood with the rest of her family, working for different studios as a freelancer. She mainly worked for RKO Pictures. She gained her first credited role in Winter Carnival (Charles F. Riesner, 1939) with Ann Sheridan, still using her real name. In 1940, she went to Warner Bros. and played serious roles under the name Joan Leslie. Her breakout role came at the age of 15 when she appeared as the crippled girl Velma in the Film Noir High Sierra (Raoul Walsh, 1941) starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart. She got the part because she could cry on cue. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "A newcomer named Joan Leslie handles lesser roles effectively."

Leslie then starred in the biopic Sergeant York (Howard Hawks, 1941) as the fiancée of the decorated war hero Alvin C. York played by Gary Cooper. Cooper (aged 40) was 24 years her senior and gave her a doll on the set. Sergeant York was a critical and financial success, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1941. The film was nominated for a total of eleven Oscars. Joan celebrated her 17th birthday on the set of the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942), in which she played the wife of Broadway producer George M. Cohan, played by James Cagney. Leslie's singing voice was partially dubbed by Sally Sweetland. The film was a major hit for Warner Brothers and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning three.

American postcard by EKC.

Dutch postcard, no. 3162.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 252. Photo: Warner Bros.

James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)

British postcard by Dover Publications Inc., 1986. Photo: Joan Leslie, James Cagney, Jeanne Cagney, Walter Huston and Rosemary De Camp in Yankee Doodle Dandy (Michael Curtiz, 1942).

On a blacklist in Hollywood

Joan Leslie frequently played the younger sister of the main character, for example, Olivia de Havilland in the comedy-drama The Male Animal (Elliott Nugent, 1942) or Ida Lupino in The Hard Way (Vincent Sherman, 1943). The Hard Way was based on a story by Irwin Shaw which was reportedly based on Ginger Rogers' relationship with her first husband Jack Pepper (whom she married in 1928 at age 17) and her mother Lela.

Leslie was Fred Astaire's partner in the star-studded extravaganza The Sky’s the Limit (Edward H. Griffith, 1943). She also appeared in films such as Thank Your Lucky Stars (David Butler, 1943), This is the Army (Michael Curtiz, 1943) with Ronald Reagan, and Hollywood Canteen (Delmer Daves, 1944). During the Second World War, Leslie was a regular volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen, where she danced with servicemen and signed autographs.

She played one of the fictitious girlfriends in the romanticised biopic Rhapsody in Blue (Irving Rapper, 1945) about American musician and composer George Gershwin. In the mid-1940s, Joan Leslie became increasingly dissatisfied because she was only playing ‘young naïve ingenues and wanted more serious and mature roles. Also, the quality of her roles had begun to deteriorate. She went to court to get out of her contract with Warner Brothers. She succeeded, but after that, Leslie only received offers from smaller film studios: Warner Brothers studio boss Jack L. Warner had put her on a blacklist in Hollywood.

In 1947, she signed a two-picture contract with the poverty row studio Eagle-Lion Films and appeared in the Film Noir Repeat Performance (Alfred L. Werker, 1947). She also appeared in the Film Noir Born to be Bad (Nicholas Ray, 1950) starring Joan Fontaine and Robert Ryan. I.S. Mowis at IMDb: “Between 1947 and 1954, Joan freelanced, often for Poverty Row outfits like Eagle-Lion, Lippert and Republic. She became yet another fatality of Hollywood typecasting, another example of an attractive ingenue, a promising starlet and a potential major star who ended up as a low-budget Western lead. Still, later interviews suggested that she rather enjoyed acting in her handful of second-string Westerns and they earned Joan a Golden Boot Award in 2006 for contributions to the genre.”

After marrying physician William G. Caldwell in 1950, Leslie shifted her focus to her family and raising her identical twin daughters, Patrice and Ellen (1951). In 1956, she played her last film, The Revolt of Mamie Stover (Raoul Walsh, 1956) starring Jane Russell. After that, Leslie made occasional appearances in TV movies and series including Charlie’s Angels (1978), The Incredible Hulk (1979), and Murder She Wrote (1988). In 1991, she played her last role as Ruthie in the television film Fire in the Dark (David Hugh Jones, 1991) with Olympia Dukakis. Leslie designed clothing under her eponymous brand. Her husband William died in 2000. Joan Leslie died in 2015 in Los Angeles at the age of 90. She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.