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Joey Heatherton (born September 14, 1944) is an American actress, dancer and singer who reached the peak of her popularity in the 1960s.

Daughter of Ray Heatherton

Christened Davenie Johanna, Joey is a native of the Long Island village of Rockville Centre, a suburb of New York. Her father was the vaudevillian and television pioneer Ray Heatherton (1909–1997), affectionately remembered by New York area baby boomers as The Merry Mailman, the endearingly cheerful and reassuring host of a long-running series of children's shows heard and seen over local radio and television between 1950 and 1963. Heatherton's gentle personality and pleasant singing voice made him one of the most beloved and recognizable regional personalities.

Stardom in the 1960s

Joey began her career as a child actress and received her first sustained national exposure in 1959 as a semi-regular on The Perry Como Show, playing an exuberant teenager with a perpetual crush on the fiftyish "Mr. C". Another middle-aged crooner who was the object of her on-screen adoration was Dean Martin who, starting with the premiere episode of September 16, 1965, invited her to perform numerous times on his popular 1965-74 NBC Thursday night TV variety show. From June to September 1968, along with Frank Sinatra, Jr., she co-hosted Martin's summer substitute musical comedy hour, Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers. She also made multiple appearances on the many other variety shows proliferating 60s television, such as The Andy Williams Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show and This Is Tom Jones.

Particularly memorable was her guest shot on a May 1969 Tonight Show, where she energetically coached Johnny Carson on the finer points of dancing "The Frug". Vietnam veterans and that era's TV viewers fondly remember her as a long-time member of Bob Hope's USO troupe who, between 1965 and 1977, delighted the GIs with her enticing singing, dancing and provocatively revealing outfits. Excerpts from the USO tours were televised as part of Hope's long-running series of NBC monthly specials, culminatating in the top-rated Christmas shows, where Joey's segments were always highly appreciated.

Dramatic actress on TV and in the movies

Additionally, throughout the 1960s, she interspersed her variety show appearances with strong dramatic turns in three theatrical films and on numerous episodes of series such as Route 66 (playing a 15-year-old temptress in the November 18, 1960 teleplay), Mr. Novak, Arrest and Trial, The Nurses, Breaking Point and several others. During the 1960 planning and pre-production stage of Lolita, Joey was Stanley Kubrick's first choice for the role, but the casting fell through on Ray Heatherton's concern that his daughter's public image would become forever linked with the unsavory sex-kitten title character, ultimately played by the even-younger Sue Lyon.

Even though Lolita was not to be, the movies Twilight of Honor (1963), Where Love Has Gone (1964) and My Blood Runs Cold (1965), showed that Joey could hold her own with veteran actors such as Claude Rains, Bette Davis and Susan Hayward, but they did not result in a sustainable film career. Each of the three films has her character involved in murder. In Honor, her film debut, she appears as the sluttish young wife of a Southern small-town "rebel" (Oscar-nominee Nick Adams) who is accused of murder precipitated by her infidelity.

The only one of the three films to be made in color, 1964's Love was a big-budget glossy melodrama based on Harold Robbins' roman a clef about the scandalous Lana Turner–Cheryl Crane–Johnny Stompanato manslaughter/murder case, with Joey, who was born the same year as Cheryl, playing the daughter of the Lana character (Susan Hayward). A number of critics commented that producer Joseph E. Levine showed at least some good taste by not casting Lana herself in the part.

Finally, Blood was the second of three 1965 horror-suspense films directed by TV's William Conrad (Two on a Guillotine and Brainstorm were the other two). Joey's leading man was 60's heartthrob Troy Donahue, but the movie was indifferently received by the public.

Career slowdown in the 1970s

In a widely-publicized 1971 incident, Joey's short-lived marriage to Lance Rentzel, a top-rated pro football receiver, then playing for the NFL Dallas Cowboys, disintegrated following his arrest for indecent exposure in front of a ten-year-old girl. The 1969-72 childless union proved to be Joey's only trip to the altar.

By the 1970s, Joey's career was slowing down, but she was still popular enough to do a series of memorable TV ads for RC Cola and Serta Mattresses. The latter were particularly noted for Joey's cheerfully uninhibited song-and-dance promotion of the suggested use for the product.

A brief high point came in July 1975 when she headlined a four-week Sunday night CBS summer replacement series for Cher's 1975-76 variety show. Joey & Dad was a musical comedy hour in the final days of that genre. "Dad", of course, was Ray Heatherton and, in a nostalgic moment, he sang his old Merry Mailman theme song.

Later years

In subsequent years, Joey performed in Las Vegas and acted in a few scattered TV shows and films, including 1972's critically-drubbed, all-star, European-made Bluebeard (with Richard Burton in the title role), in which she appeared topless, and a starring role as Xaviera Hollander in 1977's post-Watergate-inspired The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, but clearly her time had passed. Joey's most recent acting role was in the 2002 Damon Packard film Reflections of Evil.

Between 1977 and 1982, Joey was famously parodied by Catherine O'Hara on the Toronto-produced series Second City TV (shortened to SCTV in 1981). O'Hara's character, Lola Heatherton, was a neurotic and insecure TV star of little talent—a constant guest on SCTV's own fictional talk show, who responded to audience applause with the line, "I want to bear your children".

Heatherton appeared nude in the April 1997 issue of Playboy.

Filmography

• Twilight of Honor (1963)
• Where Love Has Gone (1964)
• My Blood Runs Cold (1965)
• Bluebeard (1972)
• The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977)
• The Perils of P.K. (1986)
• Cry-Baby (1990)
• Reflections of Evil (2002)

Television work

• Of Mice and Men (broadcast by ABC on January 31, 1968 as a two-hour "drama special" presented on videotape, rather than as a filmed made-for-TV movie)
• Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers (regular hostess-performer in 1968 summer replacement series)
• The Ballad of Andy Crocker (1969 90-minute ABC made-for-TV movie)
• The Powder Room (Dean Martin hosted this unsold 30-minute NBC comedy pilot broadcast on August 26, 1971)
• Joey & Dad (1975) (July 6-July 27 summer replacement series)

External links

• Jill Sobule includes a sympathetic tribute entitled "Joey"on her 2004 CD Underdog Victorious.
• http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/eccentric/joey.htm

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