Joan Evans, Actress in ‘On the Free,’ ‘Skirts Ahoy!’ and ‘Fringe of Doom,’ Dies at 89

Joan Evans, the daughter of screenwriters and goddaughter of Joan Crawford, who starred reverse Farley Granger in her first three movies and with Audie Murphy in a pair of Westerns, has died. She was 89.

Evans died Oct. 21 in Henderson, Nevada, her son, John Weatherly, informed The Hollywood Reporter.

She additionally toplined the Charles Lederer-directed On the Free (1951), taking part in a suicidal teenager within the drama written by her mother and father, Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert; portrayed Irene Dunne’s daughter within the fantasy It Grows on Timber (1952); and enlisted within the U.S. Navy with Esther Williams within the musical comedy Skirts Ahoy! (1952).

Evans performed the love curiosity of Granger’s character within the title position of Roseanna McCoy (1949), a drama loosely primarily based on the household feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. The 2 labored collectively once more within the 1950 releases Our Very Personal and Fringe of Doom, a bleak movie noir directed by Mark Robson.

The actress later starred with Murphy in Column South (1953), helmed by future Tonight Present director Fred De Cordova, and No Title on a Bullet (1959), helmed by Jack Arnold.

Named for Crawford, Joan Katherine Eunson was born on July 18, 1934, in New York. Her mother had begun her profession as a Hollywood journalist and publicist at MGM, the place Crawford first discovered fame, and she or he would go on to put in writing many articles concerning the actress whereas at Photoplay journal.

“They had been finest buddies,” Evans famous in an entertaining interview with Foster Hirsch in 2013.

Evans had been on the stage however was solely 14 when she went to work on Roseanna McCoy for producer Samuel Goldwyn. He had signed her to a contract in 1948 and put her within the film after firing Cathy O’Donnell, who had married the brother of William Wyler, who left Goldwyn to launch his personal manufacturing firm.

Whereas director Nicholas Ray was doing reshoots on the movie, Evans was “by chance shot very, very critically” within the arm by Granger when a gun he was carrying discharged within the hills outdoors Columbia, California, she informed Hirsch. She wanted emergency surgical procedure and was hospitalized.

Days after she had turned 18, Evans and her boyfriend, automobile supplier Kirby Weatherly, then 26, had been invited to Crawford’s Brentwood residence for dinner, and after their meal, the Mildred Pierce star determined that the couple ought to get married — that night time. Crawford known as a decide over to carry out the ceremony, and Evans and Weatherly had been wed minutes after midnight on July 24, 1952.

“The pinnacle of publicity at Goldwyn had mentioned to me, ‘Joan, I don’t care what you do, simply don’t name me in the midst of the night time and inform me you’re married,’” she mentioned. “So, I known as him in the midst of the night time and informed him I used to be married.”

Her mother and father didn’t need this to occur and had been livid with Crawford, by no means to talk together with her once more.

Some speculate that Crawford went in opposition to Eunson and Albert’s needs as a result of that they had lately written the screenplay for The Star (1952), which featured Bette Davis in an Oscar-winning flip as an growing old, washed-up actress determined to reignite her profession. Davis mentioned she primarily based the character on her bitter rival, Crawford.

Evans and Weatherly had been collectively till his dying on Jan. 1. Their marriage “wasn’t the error that my mother and father foretold,” she mentioned.

In the meantime, she remained shut with Crawford till her 1977 dying and mentioned she by no means witnessed any proof of “Mommie Dearest” habits from her.

“I noticed a beautiful, darling pal who was beneficiant to the max to everybody, definitely to me,” she informed Hirsch. “After I was a little bit woman, I traveled on the practice from New York to California with Joan; now that would deliver out the worst in any nice actress, [and it didn’t].”

Evans additionally appeared in such different movies as The Outcast (1954), A Unusual Journey (1956), The Flying Fontaines (1959) and The Strolling Goal (1960), and on TV exhibits together with Climax!, The Millionaire, Cheyenne, 77 Sundown Strip, Wagon Prepare, Zorro, Tales of Wells Fargo, The Tall Man and Laramie.

She stepped other than appearing within the early ’60s to look after her household and later was an editor of Hollywood Studio Journal and a instructor on the Carden Academy in Van Nuys.

All alongside, her mother and father, who had been additionally playwrights and novelists, saved writing, with their credit together with All Mine to Give (1957), Gidget Goes to Rome (1963) and a number of other episodes of Depart It to Beaver.

Along with her son, survivors embrace her daughter, Dale, and a grandson, Chris.