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Jo Van Fleet
Jo Van Fleet c.1955
Born	Catherine Josephine Van Fleet (1915-12-29)December 29, 1915 Oakland, California, U.S.
Died	June 10, 1996(1996-06-10) (aged 80) Jamaica, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1944–1986
Spouse	William G. Bales ​ ​(m. 1946; died 1990)​
Children	1

Jo Van Fleet (December 29, 1915 – June 10, 1996) was an American stage, film, and television actress. During her long career, which spanned over four decades, she often played characters much older than her actual age. Van Fleet won a Tony Award in 1954 for her performance in the Broadway production The Trip to Bountiful, and the next year she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in East of Eden.

Early life and training

Josephine Kay Van Fleet/Catherin J VanFleet was born in 1915 in Oakland, California, the younger of two daughters of Michigan native Roy H. Van Fleet and Indiana native Elizabeth "Bessie" Catherine (née Gardner). Her father Roy worked for the railroads, but died in 1919 of a streptococcus throat infection which was lanced, inadvertently spreading the disease throughout his body. Federal census records show that by age five Josephine, her 18-year-old sister Corinne, and their widowed mother were living in Oakland with Bessie's parents, Ralph and Mary Gardner. To help support herself and her two daughters at her parents' home, Bessie worked as a "sales lady" in an Oakland dry goods store.

While she had an early interest in stage productions, "Jo" graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1936, focusing on a variety of subjects, and then spent several years as a high school teacher in Morro Bay, California. She continued her theatrical training in a graduate program at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She moved after her graduation from her masters program to New York City, where she continued her training with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

Career

In 1944, Van Fleet began her professional stage career and immediately distinguished herself in the role of Miss Phipps in the production of Uncle Harry at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. Two years later, in New York, she distinguished herself as well on Broadway by her performances as Dorcas in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale; and yet again, in 1950, as Regan opposite Louis Calhern in King Lear. She won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1954 for her portrayal of Jessie Mae Watts in Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful, costarring Lillian Gish and Eva Marie Saint.

Despite her early successes on the stage, Van Fleet continued to refine her skills in the late 1940s and early 1950s by studying with Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York. Kazan in 1952 directed her in the play Flight to Egypt and the following year in Camino Real. In 1954 he encouraged her to work in films in Hollywood. There Kazan cast her in his screen adaptation of John Steinbeck's East of Eden (1955) for Warner Bros. In that production—her film debut—Van Fleet portrays Cathy Ames, the mother of James Dean's character. Her performance, which was widely praised by critics, won her an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her subsequent film work was steady through 1960 and included films such as The Rose Tattoo (1955), I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), The King and Four Queens (1956), and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Her career, however, did not progress as she had hoped. Her friend and mentor, Kazan, personally experienced her frustrations: "'Jo stagnated, and, since she knew it, was bitter. And as she became bitter, she became more difficult.'" In an interview for the Los Angeles Times after her Oscar-winning performance in East of Eden, Van Fleet openly expressed her concerns "about being typecast in tragic roles".

In 1958, Van Fleet was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance in Look Homeward, Angel, in which she played the acquisitive mother of Anthony Perkins' character. Her later films included Wild River (1960), one of the productions in which she played a character far older than her actual age. Only age 44 at the time of Wild River, Van Fleet spent five hours every morning getting into make-up for her role as Ella, the 89-year-old matriarch of the Garth family. Some of her other notable roles include the Wicked Stepmother in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella (1965), Paul Newman's mother in Cool Hand Luke (1967), and Peter Sellers's mother in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968).

Van Fleet's work on television included such series as Naked City, Thriller, Bonanza, The Wild Wild West, and Police Woman. Among her most emotionally charged dramatic performances on television is her portrayal of the bitter, explosive Mrs. Shrike in the 1956 episode "Shopping for Death" on Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Van Fleet's final performance, a brief but "delicious" supporting turn in the 1986 TV adaptation of Saul Bellow's Seize the Day, elicited this comment from Washington Post critic Tom Shales:

Jo Van Fleet, who seems even to walk and blink legendarily, has a tiny part and only two small scenes as Mrs. Einhorn, an old woman with two incontinent dachshunds, but what a piquant impression she makes.

Personal life and death

In 1946, Van Fleet married William G. Bales, whose career in modern dance included work as a performer, choreographer, professor at Bennington College, and the founding Dean of Dance at the State University of New York at Purchase, N. Y. They remained together until his death in 1990. The couple had one child, Michael Bales.

In February 1960, in recognition of her career in the motion-picture industry, as well as her work on stage and in television, Van Fleet was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It is located at 7010 Hollywood Boulevard. Politically, she was a Democrat, and in the 1952 United States presidential election she supported Adlai Stevenson.

Van Fleet died at age 80 from undisclosed causes in New York City at Jamaica Hospital in Queens. Her body was cremated and her ashes were returned to her family.

Filmography

References

1. ^ "The Birth of Cathrin Vanfleet [sic]", online database of California birth records, 1905-1995; californiabirthindex.org. Retrieved September 2, 2015.
2. ^ Vallance, Tom. "Obituary: Jo Van Fleet", The Independent (London), June 20, 1996. Retrieved November 21, 2013.
3. "Indiana Marriages, 1780-1992", original registration, Roy H. Van Fleet to Elizabeth Catherine Gardner, Goshen, Indiana, 1 June 1898; archives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah. FamilySearch.
4. "California Birth Index, 1905-1995", "Catherine J Vanfleet", 29 December 1915; registration database, Alameda, California Department of Health Services, Vital Statistics Department, Sacramento; archives of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. FamilySearch.
5. ^ "The Fourteenth Census of the United States Census: 1920", copy of original enumeration page, Josephine Van Fleet in household of Ralph W. Gardner, Oakland, Alameda, California, January 6, 1920; citing ED 145, sheet 8A, line 16, family 181, NARA microfilm, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
6. ^ Gussow, Mel. "Jo Van Fleet, 81, an Actress Who Portrayed Proud Women", obituary, The New York Times, June 11, 1996, p. B-12; subscription required for archival access. Retrieved July 21, 2020.
7. "Jo Van Fleet; Obituary", The Times (London), June 14, 1996, p. 1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers (Ann Arbor, Michigan); subscription access through The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.
8. ^ "Jo Van Fleet, Award-Winning Actress", obituary, Los Angeles Times, June 11, 1996, p. 22. ProQuest.
9. "Show Time in the Downtown Theaters/STAGE/National—'Uncle Harry' at 8:30 p.m."], The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.), August 17, 1944, p. 5. ProQuest.
10. To view a video excerpt of Van Fleet's cited performance, see "The Accident Prone 'Shopping For Death'|Hitchcock Presents", originally uploaded May 3, 2019 on YouTube (San Bruno, California). Retrieved July 22, 2020.
11. Rosenberg, Howard (May 1, 1987). "TV Review: Robin Williams Seizes Bellow's 'Day'". The Los Angeles Times. p. 22. "There are also some delicious cameos by Jo Van Fleet and William Hickey." Retrieved March 7, 2022.
12. Shales, Tom (May 2, 1987). "Robin Williams Seizes the Day". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 7, 2022.
13. "OSCAR-WINNING ACTRESS JO VAN FLEET DIES AT 81". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved October 30, 2023.
14. ^ "Jo Van Fleet", ceremony February 8, 1960, Hollywood Walk of Fame, Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles, California. Retrieved July 21, 2020.
15. "Motion Picture's Christmas Toy Party". Motion Picture and Television Magazine, November 1952, Vol. 84, No. 5; page 33.
16. Wilson, Scott (September 16, 2016). Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons (3d ed.). McFarland. p. 769. ISBN 978-1476625997.

External links

• Jo Van Fleet at the American Film Institute Catalog
• Jo Van Fleet at the Internet Broadway Database
• Jo Van Fleet at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Jo Van Fleet at IMDb
• Jo Van Fleet at the TCM Movie Database
• Jo Van Fleet at AllMovie

• 1915 births
• 1996 deaths
• American film actresses
• American stage actresses
• Best Supporting Actress Academy Award winners
• Donaldson Award winners
• Tony Award winners
• Actresses from Oakland, California
• University of the Pacific (United States) alumni
• 20th-century American actresses
• California Democrats
• New York (state) Democrats