Joanna Barnes

Early life and education

Barnes was born in Boston, to John Pindar Barnes (1908–1970) and the former Alice Weston Mutch (1908–1980). She had two younger sisters, Alice and Judith, and grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts.

Barnes attended Milton Academy and then Smith College, from which she graduated in 1956 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. She majored in English. Barnes received the college's award for poetry, the immediate successor to Sylvia Plath for this recognition. Her research for a magazine article about making movies led to a career change to acting.

Career

Barnes' initial appearance on television was in the episode "The Man Who Beat Lupo" on Ford Theatre. She made guest appearances on many television series, including the ABC/Warner Bros. programs 77 Sunset Strip and Maverick, CBS's Have Gun - Will Travel, and the crime drama Richard Diamond, Private Detective. In 1961, she guest-starred on The Untouchables episode "90 Proof Dame" as the wife of a French exporter of brandy. Barnes appeared as Kate Henniger in the 1958 episode "Ghost Town" of the ABC/WB Western series Colt .45.

In 1959, she portrayed Lola in the NBC detective series 21 Beacon Street. In the 1960s, Barnes worked for producer Martin Ransohoff and appeared in episodes of his The Beverly Hillbillies ("Elly Goes to School" and "The Clampett Look") and was billed as special guest-star. Barnes played Peter Falk's former wife on the 1965–1966 CBS series The Trials of O'Brien and was host of the ABC daytime talk show Dateline: Hollywood in 1967. She appeared as Barbara Soames, a beautiful heiress turned hit woman involved in the murder of a Chicago mobster in season 4, episode 22 of Hawaii Five-O, titled "Didn't We Meet at a Murder?".

She was also a frequent panellist in the early years of the syndicated version of What's My Line?. On December 19, 1972, Barnes appeared on The Merv Griffin Show with Joan Fontaine, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Dan Martino. She appeared in season 7 episode 22 of Cheers, "The Visiting Lecher", on May 4, 1989.

Film

Barnes moved to Los Angeles soon after finishing her education, and took up a contract with Columbia Pictures. She went on to have roles in more than 20 films. Among her most remembered roles is the snooty Gloria Upson in the film Auntie Mame (1958), which earned her a Golden Globe Award nomination for New Star of the Year. Barnes became the 13th actress to play Jane when she appeared in Tarzan, the Ape Man (1959), with Denny Miller as Tarzan.

She played the younger of the two Roman women who visited Peter Ustinov's gladiator school and thoughtlessly provoked a slave rebellion in 1960's Spartacus. In Disney's original 1961 version of The Parent Trap starring Hayley Mills, Barnes played gold-digger Vicki Robinson, who temporarily comes between Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith. In the 1998 remake starring Lindsay Lohan, she played Vicki Blake, the mother of the child-hating gold-digger and fiancée Meredith Blake (Elaine Hendrix). In 1967, she appeared in The War Wagon, a Western movie starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas.