I am sorry to report the death of Joan Weldon who has passed away at her home in Florida . She is survived by her husband of 56 years, Dr. David Podell.
Joan’s film career was brief, lasting a few years in the middle 1950s . Her Warner Brothers contract cast her mainly in westerns though she was a trained opera singer.
Joan’s costars included Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott ,Guy Madison and Fred MacMurray. And she will be remembered for her role in the classic sci-fi movie, Them!
Joan appeared in two musicals , So This Is Love (The Grace Moore Story) and Deep in My heart, but she had no songs in the former and only a very brief scene with Tony Martin in the latter.
After her spell in Hollywood , Joan returned to her first love , singing and starred in many shows at Lincoln Centre in New York – The Sound Of Music, The Desert Song, Oklahoma, Carousel. And she performed at the Hollywood Bowl.
She also did some television – Perry Mason, Lux Video Theater.
With Randolph Scott. The Stranger Wore A Gun.
Joan also costarred with Randolph Scott in Riding Shotgun.
With Edward Franz in Day of the Badman (1958)
With Guy Madison . The Command.
With Joel McCrea. Gunsight Ridge.
THEM!
James Arness, Joan Weldon, James Whitmore, Edmund Gwen. THEM!
Vienna's Classic Hollywood 
There were so many Joan’s around in the fifties, Joan Taylor, Joan Vohs, that I tend to get them confused. Joan W was also in the 1961 Broadway musical Kean with Alfred Drake which lasted only for 91 performances.
Joan’s career path took her back to singing and that Broadway appearance in Kean.
I’m glad as it must have made up for the routine parts she got in Hollywood.
Vienna, a nice write-up of Joan Weldon a talented and beautiful actress. Recently we viewed THEM!(filmed 1953, released 1954) and I thought that her role as a scientist was one that was ahead of its time. As the female lead, she got to do something other than stand around and scream. Although, it was a tough shoot. According to her, in an interview by Tom Weaver for his book I WAS A MONSTER MOVIE MAKER: CONVERSATIONS WITH 22 SF AND HORROR FILMMAKERS(2001), the movie was a, “very tough picture to make, because of the heavy wool suit that I wore. We were in the Mojave Desert, and it was 110 in the shade. Poor Teddy(Edmund Gwenn) he had a suit and a tie and a hat, and I had the hat and the high heels and the hose. And, in those days, you wore girdles, and they were heavy!”
In a statement released by her family Joan Weldon was, ““A talented and successful opera singer and actress of theatre, film, musicals and television, she was simply known to many as Joanie, “whose love for light-hearted pranks and practical jokes spread joy wherever she went.”
JOAN WELDON R.I.P.
Thanks, Walter. And thanks for the comments Joan made – I have THEM! on my list of discs to watch again.
A shame really that Joan’s film career was so short.