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| Birth Name(s) : Davenie Johanna Heatherton |
Date of Birth: September 14, 1944 |
| Status:
N/A
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Partner:
N/A |
| Profession:
Actor/Musician |
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Full Joey Heatherton Biography
Blonde and beautiful singer/dancer/actress Joey Heatherton was a product of the swinging 60s and taunted the TV variety scene at that time as a purring, assertive sexpot. Born in 1944 and the daughter of veteran song-and-dance man Ray Heatherton (1909-1997), she was a teenage performer on the New York stage as one of the children in "The Sound of Music" and also began recording about that time. She gained national exposure as an innocent type teen who developed a crush on Perry Como in his TV show.
From this she moved to film and appeared in such forgettable films as Twilight of Honor (1963) with Nick Adams, Where Love Has Gone (1964) with Bette Davis and Susan Hayward and My Blood Runs Cold (1965) with Troy Donahue, often playing neurotic young girls.
Music was her forte, however, and she eventually forged a mod, sulky, Lolita-like "sex kitten" image, decked out in mini-skirts and go-go boots with frenetic dance moves and saucy glances her turn on gimmicks. An excellent singer in her own right, she soon became a Vegas showroom favorite. On the side she had soldiers swooning when she toured with Bob Hope on his USO tours. She even won her own variety show in which her dad co-starred.
And then the troubles began. In 1971, her marriage to football player Lance Rentzel ended in tabloid scandal when he was arrested for indecent exposure in front of a young girl. The 70s also brought an end to her popularity. Her look, style and attitude went completely out of vogue and she found herself unwanted and unemployed. Mounting problems with drugs (cocaine) certinaly didn't help. She was arrested multiple times for possession and the effects of her addiction started affecting her mental faculties. An eating disorder ravaged her once dynamite looks and nearly killed her. A few attempted comebacks have been abortive. For someone who had the world on a string, she certainly is a prime example of how luck can change so quickly in Hollywood. |
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Additional Joey Heatherton Biography
Christened Davenie Johanna, Joey is a native of the Long Island village of Rockville Centre, a suburb of New York. While living in Rockville Centre she attended St. Agnes Cathedral School, a Catholic grade and high school.
Her two 45rpm record releases, "Hullaballoo" (Coral, 1965) and "When You Call Me Baby" (Decca, 1966) sold poorly but, since the '70s, both have become very sought after in the UK amongst Northern Soul collectors, the Decca offering now changing hands amongst dealers and collectors for three-figure sums.
Particularly memorable was her guest shot on a May 1969 Tonight Show, where she energetically coached Johnny Carson on the finer points of dancing "The Frug". Vietnam War veterans and that era's TV viewers fondly remember her as a long-time member of Bob Hope's USO troupe who, between 1965 and 1977, delighted the GIs with her enticing singing, dancing and provocatively revealing outfits. Excerpts from the USO tours were televised as part of Hope's long-running series of NBC monthly specials, culminatating in the top-rated Christmas shows, where Joey's segments were always highly appreciated.
Even though Lolita was not to be, the movies Twilight of Honor (1963), Where Love Has Gone (1964) and My Blood Runs Cold (1965), showed that Joey could hold her own with veteran actors such as Claude Rains, Bette Davis and Susan Hayward, but they did not result in a sustainable film career. Each of the three films has her character involved in murder. In Twilight of Honor, her film debut, she appears as the sluttish young wife of a Southern small-town "rebel" (Oscar-nominee Nick Adams) who is accused of murder precipitated by her infidelity.
The only one of the three films to be made in color, 1964's Where Love Has Gone was a big-budget glossy melodrama based on Harold Robbins' roman a clef about the scandalous Lana Turner–Cheryl Crane–Johnny Stompanato manslaughter/murder case, with Joey, who was born the same year as Crane, playing the daughter of the Turner character (Susan Hayward). A number of critics commented that producer Joseph E. Levine showed at least some good taste by not offering the part to Turner herself.
Finally, Blood was the second of three 1965 horror-suspense films directed by TV's William Conrad (Two on a Guillotine and Brainstorm were the other two). Joey's leading man was 1960's heartthrob Troy Donahue, but the movie was indifferently received by the public.
In a widely-publicized 1971 incident, Joey's short-lived marriage to Lance Rentzel, a top-rated pro football receiver, then playing for the NFL Dallas Cowboys, disintegrated following his arrest for indecent exposure in front of a ten-year-old girl. The 1969-72 childless union proved to be Joey's only trip to the altar.
A brief high point came in July 1975 when she headlined Joey & Dad, a four-week Sunday night summer replacement series for Cher's 1975-76 variety show. The 7:30-8:30 pm CBS production was a musical comedy hour in the final days of that genre. "Dad", of course, was Ray Heatherton and, in a nostalgic moment, he put on the familiar old uniform and sang his "I am the Merry Mailman" theme song. A highlight of each episode would involve Ray waxing nostalgic over life with Joey, while rooting through his attic.
In subsequent years, Joey performed in Las Vegas and acted in a few scattered TV shows and films, including 1972's critically-drubbed, all-star, European-made Bluebeard (with Richard Burton in the title role), in which she appeared topless, and a starring role as Xaviera Hollander in 1977's post-Watergate scandal-inspired The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington, but clearly her time had passed. Joey's most recent acting role was in the 2002 Damon Packard film Reflections of Evil.
Between 1977 and 1982, Joey was famously parodied by Catherine O'Hara on the Toronto-produced series Second City TV (shortened to SCTV in 1981). O'Hara's character, Lola Heatherton, was a neurotic and insecure TV star of little talent—a constant guest on SCTV's own fictional talk show called “The Sammy Maudlin Show”, who responded to audience applause with the line, "I want to bear all your children...ha ha ha ha ha". |
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