Joan Leslie: Classic Hollywood Star Who Was True to Herself

Joan Leslie was a Catholic film star who sued to break her contract. "She realised the roles the studios were now offering her lacked moral clarity and substance."

From Aleteia

By Mary Claire Kendall

On October 12, 2015, almost 55 years to the day after she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she died in Los Angeles at age 90.

Joan Leslie was a darling and talented star who radiated refreshing innocence. But she was no ingénue. Rather she embodied a simple yet multilayered high moral character. 

As Velma Goodhue in High Sierra (1941), she played a young working-class girl with disability; hardened criminal Roy Earle, played by Humphrey Bogart, befriends her. Earle pays for an operation to correct her clubfoot, then falls in love with her. Velma is engaged; Roy, left heartbroken.

As Gracie Williams, in her next role, opposite Gary Cooper in Sergeant York (1941), she played York’s sweetheart and future bride. Gracie knew what she wanted — York. But he needs to measure up before she agrees to marry him. But she is in love with him, which Leslie beautifully portrays.

It was much the same with her character, Mary, in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), opposite James Cagney as the famous Broadway entertainer George M. Cohan, who takes an immediate liking to this aspiring singer, soon marrying her. Through it all, she stands by her man, while cunningly yet playfully steering him in the right direction.

Then, too, she knew what she wanted in Hollywood — respect. And, when Hollywood began giving her roles that were morally empty, she demurred.

Forged in the Depression

Born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel on January 26, 1925, in Detroit, Michigan, she was the youngest of three girls, who, like their mother, were all musically talented — Betty and Mary learning to play the sax and banjo, Joan, the accordion.

As the Great Depression metastasized, and their banker father lost his job, the three sisters hit the vaudeville circuit as “The Three Brodels,” touring in Canada and the United States, under the radar of child labor laws by pretending they were older — nine-year-old Joan claiming she was 16.  Given her prodigious impersonation talent, doing flawless imitations of Hepburn, Chevalier, and Durante, it worked. 

Her Irish ancestry bequeathed to her a rich Catholicism which she lived devoutly; she was formed in the faith at Catholic schools in Detroit, Toronto, and Montreal.

Soon catching the eye of a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer talent scout in New York, Joan was signed to a six-month contract, earning the princely sum of $200 a week, while attending the Little Red Schoolhouse with Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, and Freddie Bartholomew. But, after she was cast in Camille (1936), her lines were cut, she dropped, and it was back to New York for radio and modeling. Before long, she returned as a freelancer mainly for RKO Pictures, when her sister Mary was signed to Universal Studios.

Chosen by Hollywood’s top directors as one of 13 “baby stars of 1940,” Warner Bros. snatched her up, changing her name to Joan Leslie and screen-testing her for High Sierra. Not knowing she was testing for such a big film, she got the role because, as the Sunday Morning Star reported, “she could cry on cue.”

Fast on the heels of that success came her starring role as Gracie in Sergeant York, teeing up Yankee Doodle Dandy. Life described her portrayals as “sweet innocence without seeming too sugary.”

She made four more films, released in 1943, and during World War II volunteered regularly at the Hollywood Canteen, featured in the Warner Bros. film of that name (1944).

Fighting for character

Though considered “the most promising star of tomorrow” in Motion Picture Herald’s 1946 poll, that same year she realized the roles the studios were now offering her lacked moral clarity and substance. So she fought and won in court and was released from her Warner Bros. contract — the Catholic Theater Guild recognizing her “consistent refusal to use her talents and art in film productions of objectionable character.”

Jack Warner responded by blacklisting her. Shut out by all the major Hollywood studios, she was forced to accept work at the “poverty row” studio of Eagle-Lion Films and her career never recovered. Pivoting to full-time mothering, she accepted the occasional film role, including Republic Pictures’ Flight Nurse (1953) in which she played Polly Davis, based on successful flight nurse Lillian Kinkella Keil with a storied Air Force career. She made her last film in 1956 while doing television shows sporadically.

She had wed William Caldwell, an obstetrician, in 1950, giving birth to twin daughters Patrice Joan Caldwell and Ellen Marie Caldwell, on January 5, 1951 — both becoming outstanding teachers. A devoted wife of 50 years, while seeking greener pastures, she developed her Joan Leslie clothing line under the Leslie Fay label. In 2001, she founded the Dr. William G. and Joan L. Caldwell Chair in Gynecologic Oncology for the University of Louisville — having also volunteered for over 50 years at St. Anne’s Maternity.

On October 12, 2015, almost 55 years to the day after she received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she died in Los Angeles at age 90, at peace knowing she had been true to herself.