Joyce Reynolds(1924-2019)

Perky, brunette Joyce Reynolds was another doe-eyed hopeful who had a brief flirtation with Hollywood stardom in the 1940s. The daughter of Joel B. Reynolds and his wife Mary (née Dunn) attended the University of California before being 'discovered' by a talent scout during an amateur stage performance of Alice in Wonderland. A successful audition led to a contract with Warner Brothers. As luck would have it, Joyce bumped into the director Michael Curtiz during her first visit to the studio lot. Curtiz, suitably impressed with what a reviewer later described as her 'cute and cuddly personality', assigned her a small role in the blockbuster musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), starring James Cagney. Joyce then played the famous author's daughter Clara Clemens (1874-1962) in The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944), before Curtiz directed her again -- but this time in a starring role -- as the eponymous bobby-soxer Janie (1944). Panned by critics, this sugary comedy about teenage mentality in the 40s did well enough at the box-office.

Joyce next played herself in the star-studded piece of nostalgia that was Hollywood Canteen (1944). She also got another lead role (opposite Robert Hutton) as a cinema buff who inherits a million dollars from a dying millionaire who then recovers and decides to reclaim the fortune in Always Together (1947). The picture is now chiefly notable for a number of cameos by top-shelf Warner's contract stars, including Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn. Joyce again co-starred with Hutton in Wallflower (1948), as one of two sisters (the other being Janis Paige) vying for the affections of the same man.

In 1945, Warners had already given notice that Joyce's contract was to be rescinded, ostensibly for the actress to continue her education at a private university in North Carolina. This was also given as the reason why she was dropped for the Janie sequel Janie Gets Married (1946) (Joan Leslie ending up playing the part). She had, by then, married a Marine Corps pilot and given birth to a daughter. Her swansong as a free-lance actress -- five years later -- was to be Girls' School (1950), a second feature melodrama for Columbia. And that was it for Joyce Reynolds. She got married a second time in 1947 to Don Gallery, the adopted son of actress Zasu Pitts and the actor Tom Gallery. This union also ended in divorce. Apparently, Joyce reinvented herself as a teacher and disappeared from public view. She married thrice more. Her last husband, Arthur George White, predeceased her in 1980. At the time of her own death in September 2019, she was known as 'Helen Joyce White'.