Actress Brenda Joyce died of pneumonia on 4 July 2009. Born Betty Graffina Leabo in Excelsior Springs, Missouri, on 25 February 1917, she will be best remembered as Jane in several Tarzan movies.
While she was in college, she modeled to help pay her tuition. A representative of 20th Century Fox found her in a fashion layout and signed her to a film contract; she debuted in The Rains Came (1939), but following her impulsive marriage, her career was relegated to mostly B movies, and her last film appearance came in 1949.
In 1945, Joyce succeeded Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane in the Tarzan film franchise, and she was the only actress to play Jane opposite two different actors as Tarzan. She appeared in Tarzan and the Amazons (1945), Tarzan and the Leopard Woman (1946), Tarzan and the Huntress (1947), and Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948) with Johnny Weissmuller, and then stayed on with the franchise for Tarzan’s Magic Fountain (1949) with Lex Barker. It was her last movie, and then she dropped out of public life.
She also appeared in three horror movies: Strange Confession (1945), Pillow of Death (1945), and The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946). In all, she acted in only 26 movies. In 1971, however, she appeared twice as herself on the television show Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.
Joyce is survived by a son, two daughters and three grandchildren. Her children were the products of her eight-year marriage in the 1940s to Owen Ward.