Joan Taylor(1929-2012)
- Actress
- Writer
- Director
Joan Taylor's mother, Amelia Berky, was a vaudeville singing-dancing
star in the 1920s. Her father was a prop man in Hollywood during that
same period, but, after Joan's birth, the family moved to Lake Forest,
Illinois, where her father managed a movie theater. She developed a
love of movies from watching so many at her father's theater, and she
graduated from the Chicago National Association of Dancing Masters.
Heading to Hollywood in 1946, she enrolled at the Pasadena Playhouse.
Victor Jory arranged an interview for her with producer Nat Holt, and she
made her film debut in the Randolph Scott western Fighting Man of the Plains (1949). She appeared in
quite a few films over the next several years, many of them westerns.
She also made many appearances on TV series, and had a recurring role
in The Rifleman (1958), but it's for two sci-fi films that she is fondly remembered
by 1950s movie audiences: Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957). After her two-year stint
on "The Rifleman", however, she decided to retire from films, and did
so in 1963.
