Biography
"I happen to be darn lucky that I photograph well in Technicolor," peaches-and-cream complexioned Joan Caulfield readily admitted, having just romped through Paramount's
Blue Skies (1946), opposite
Bing Crosby and
Fred Astaire, and the equally colorful
Monsieur Beaucaire (1946), with
Bob Hope. One of those sexually non-threatening blondes who decorated postwar Hollywood escapism, Caulfield had been a model for Harry Conover when discovered by Broadway producer
George Abbott, who cast her in the lead of Kiss and Tell (1943), a typical piece of Americana that lasted a whopping 480 performances and turned the novice into a hot commodity. She signed a contract with Paramount and went on to decorate a series of rather bland musical extravaganzas (her time-stepping with Astaire in
Blue Skies is hardly memorable) and comedies. Warner Bros. borrowed her for
The Unsuspected (1947), a pale imitation of
Laura (1944) with Caulfield as the girl who returns from the grave, so to speak. But cast against such scene-stealers as
Audrey Totter and
Constance Bennett -- not to mention an especially hammy
Claude Rains -- a star-billed Caulfield found herself thoroughly upstaged.
She was much better suited to playing the title role in
Dear Ruth (1947), from
Norman Krasna's Broadway hit, and offers a restrained performance as the girl whose enterprising kid sister (
Mona Freeman) mails her likeness to an Army lieutenant (
William Holden) based overseas. The popular comedy spawned two sequels,
Dear Wife (1950) and
Dear Brat (1951), but Caulfield's role was eliminated in the latter. Cinematically, the 1950s proved anticlimactic and Caulfield mainly appeared in films produced by her husband (from 1950), Frank Ross, but she was a success on the small screen, especially opposite
Barry Nelson on My Favorite Husband. Much to her later regret, she left the situation comedy in 1954 when film replaced live performances and it would be
Vanessa Brown who went on to receive rerun residuals. Another attempt for sitcom stardom, the self-produced
Sally struggled on for a season or so before being canceled in 1958.
Like so many of her contemporaries, Caulfield turned up in A.C. Lyles' Westerns in the 1960s, earned fourth billing in the equally retro
The Daring Dobermans (1973), and, now a mature character player, decorated such popular television shows as
High Chaparral,
Baretta, and, inevitably, Murder She Wrote. An unspectacular actress, Joan Caulfield is nevertheless fondly remembered for adding a bit of dignity and Dresden doll beauty to the immediate postwar years, a nice and comforting counterpoint to the often fatal femmes that defined the era. ~ Hans J. Wollstein, All Movie Guide