Joyce Jameson

Joyce Jameson
Born	(1932-09-26)September 26, 1932 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	January 16, 1987(1987-01-16) (aged 54) Burbank, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Suicide
Resting place	Cremains scattered into the Pacific Ocean
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1951–1984
Spouse(s)	Billy Barnes (divorced)
Children	Tyler Barnes

Joyce Jameson (September 26, 1932 – January 16, 1987) was an American actress, known for many television roles, including recurring guest appearances as “Skippy”, one of the "fun girls" in the 1960s television series The Andy Griffith Show, as well as for film portrayals such as the woman taken advantage of by philandering businessmen, and credited only as "The Blonde" in the 1960 Academy Award winner The Apartment.

Career

Films

Jameson began work in the early 1950s with numerous uncredited roles in films and television. She made her film debut in 1951 playing a chorus girl dancer in the motion picture Show Boat. Her other notable film credits of that early period included Problem Girls (1953), Tip on a Dead Jockey (1957) and The Apartment (1960).

In 1962, she starred alongside Vincent Price and Peter Lorre in the Roger Corman horror film Tales of Terror as Annabel Herringbone. She played Lorre's vulgar, unfaithful wife and during the course of the film she and her paramour (Price) were locked up in Lorre's wine cellar. One year later, she again starred alongside Lorre and Price in the raucous comedy The Comedy of Terrors (released in 1964), where she was more typically cast as she had been in the 1950s. In 1964, she appeared as a hotel hooker in the comedy Good Neighbor Sam, starring Jack Lemmon and Romy Schneider.

For Jameson, 1966 proved to be an important year. She starred as Abigail in the Elvis Presley film Frankie and Johnny and in Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! alongside Bob Hope and Elke Sommer. She also appeared in 1968's The Split, a crime film with Jim Brown and Warren Oates, and in an unsold comedy pilot for CBS called The Mouse That Roared but it was never released.

In the 1970s, Jameson had notable roles in films such as Death Race 2000 (1975) playing Grace Pander and she appeared in the 1976 Clint Eastwood western The Outlaw Josey Wales as Rose, further illustrating that her acting spanned a great number of genres. She also appeared in Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and one of her last roles was Hardbodies (1984).

Television

Jameson was also a television actress. She made two appearances on Perry Mason: first as Lorraine Iverson who killed her husband in the 1963 episode, "The Case of the Floating Stones", then as Dolly Jameson in the 1965 episode, "The Case of the Feather Cloak". She also had roles on Gunsmoke, Club Oasis, Stagecoach West, The Twilight Zone, McHale's Navy, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, F-Troop, Hogan's Heroes (1967 episode: "The Great Brinksmeyer Robbery", as Mady Pleiffer), Alias Smith and Jones, Emergency! and Barney Miller. She appeared in The Rockford Files (in the 1974 episode "The Dexter Crisis" as Marge White). Towards the late 1970s she appeared in Charlie's Angels and The Feather and Father Gang, and in the early 1980s in The Love Boat. Her ongoing role as Skippy paired with Daphne (played by Jean Carson) in the The Andy Griffith Show established The Fun Girls, and inspired the characters for the later series Laverne & Shirley.

Personal life and death

She was married to actor/songwriter Billy Barnes for many years; they had one child, a son named Tyler Barnes. Subsequently, Jameson was a longtime girlfriend of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn. She acted opposite Vaughn as the guest star on U.N.C.L.E. episode #45, The Dippy Blond Affair in 1967.

According to Vaughn's autobiography, A Fortunate Life, Jameson suffered from depression. She was also an insomniac and regularly took Miltown to help her sleep.^[1]

On January 16, 1987, Jameson committed suicide by overdosing on pills at the age of 54.^[2] Her body was cremated and her ashes scattered at sea.

Selected filmography

References

External links

• Joyce Jameson at the Internet Movie Database
• Joyce Jameson at the Internet Broadway Database
  
• Joyce Jameson at Find a Grave