After several years in relatively anonymous parts in films that have been largely forgotten Brenda Joyce emerged to fill one of cinema’s most celebrated supporting roles. She was Jane to two different Tarzans in the 1940s, then retired from acting at the end of the decade and disappeared from public view once more.
Originally Betty Graffina Leabo, she was born in Missouri — probably in 1917, though some sources cite earlier years. She made an auspicious film debut in 1939 as a precocious teenager who gets romantically involved with George Brent in The Rains Came. It was an adventure starring Myrna Loy and Tyrone Power, set in India, but filmed in California. Joyce worked steadily and regularly for 20th Century Fox for several years without becoming a major star and her career might have stalled after she left Fox were it not for the fact that Maureen O’Sullivan vacated the role of Tarzan’s mate.
Joyce first played Jane in Tarzan and the Amazons which appeared in 1945, opposite Johnny Weissmuller, who probably remains cinema’s best-known ape-man. It was the first of four Tarzan films they made together. It also raised her profile within the industry to the point that she was asked to play the female lead in Abbott and Costello’s On the Carpet (1946) and starred in Universal’s The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946).
She retained the role of Jane when Lex Barker took over as Tarzan in Tarzan’s Magic Fountain (1949). But Joyce was older than Barker, irrespective of which of the various cited birth-years dates are used, and when Barker returned with Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1950) it was with the much younger Vanessa Brown. Joyce retired from filming and latterly took a job helping immigrants to settle into their new lives. She is survived by three children.
Brenda Joyce, actress, was born on February 25, 1917. She died on July 4, 2009, aged 92