We are winding down our What a Character blog, about character actors in classic television shows. Today we are learning about Joyce Renee Brown, better known as Joi Lansing.

Lansing was born in Utah in 1929. Her father was a shoe salesman and orchestra musician, and her mom was a housewife.

Her parents divorced when she was young, and her stepfather Vernon Loveland adopted her. In 1940, the family moved to Los Angeles. Joi began modeling at 14 and was signed to an MGM contract, attending school at the studio.

Lansing began her film career in 1947, appearing in When a Girl’s Beautiful and Linda Be Good. She had uncredited roles in Easter Parade and Singing in the Rain, among others. Almost half of her 106 acting credits were for shorts and big-screen films.

Her first three marriages lasted less than some of her films. At 17 she was married for less than a year. In 1950 her marriage to Jerome Safron was annulled after four months, and her marriage to Lance Fuller in 1951 ended in divorce in 1953.

Her first television role came in 1952 in Racket Squad. This was a show I had not run across before, but it was on the air for three years. It had a Dragnet-like feel to it with the main character Captain Braddock explaining “What you are about to see is a real-life story, taken from the files of the police racket and bunco squads, business protective associations and similar sources around the country. It is intended to expose the confidence game – the carefully worked-out frauds by which confidence men take more money each year from the American public than all the bank robbers and thugs with their violence.

The early fifties kept her busy in drama series. In the the mid-to-late fifties, she appeared on I Love Lucy, The Gale Storm Show, December Bride, Perry Mason, Maverick, The Jack Benny Show, and Richard Diamond, Private Eye.

From 1955-59 she had a recurring role on The Bob Cummings Show with 24 appearances as Shirley, a model. While she was attending UCLA, a writer for the show spotted her. After being cast as pinup girls and stereotyped as a beautiful bombshell, this series proved Lansing had acting abilities, and it propelled her to receiving offers for better scripts.

In 1960, Lansing married Stan Todd and they remained married until her death. However, they had been separated for years.

Lansing was also a recording star. In the early sixties, she performed with Xavier Cugat and Les Paul. She recorded several songs during the sixties.

The sixties were split between film and television work. She accepted roles on ten shows including Klondike (7 episodes as Goldie), The Untouchables, The Joey Bishop Show, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (12 episodes as various characters), Petticoat Junction, and The Beverly Hillbillies (6 episodes as Gladys Flatt, wife of musician Lester Flatt).

Lansing was in her last movie, Bigfoot, and last television role, The Governor and JJ, in 1970. While on the set of Bigfoot, she met Alexis Hunter who was playing a monkey in the film. Obviously, this was not a film to highlight on the resume. According to Hunter, the two fell in love and were together for three years until Joi’s death. Same-sex relationships were forbidden in Hollywood at the time, so they told people they were sisters. They had similar looks, so they got away with it.

Joi died from breast cancer in 1972 at only 43 years of age. Joi had been diagnosed with both breast and ovarian cancer in 1970 but went into remission. As a disclaimer, Bigfoot was the only acting role Hunter was credited with, and the revelation of her relationship with Lansing was only known from a book that Hunter wrote in 2015. I could not find any other documentation to back up her claim.

I am torn about Lansing’s career. She certainly had a successful career on paper, but she never got the break she deserved with the right acting role. Considering that she had 106 credits and passed away at only 43, one has to wonder how many more credits she could have amassed if she had worked for another two decades. I know there is a fine line of Hollywood actresses who might have the looks but not the talent, but for those who have both, Hollywood is not often fair, stereotyping them into “dumb blonde” or “pinup” roles. I had only been familiar with Lansing from The Bob Cummings Show, so it was interesting to learn more about her and her career.