Film & TV / Theatre & dance
Joan Leslie
1925–2015
· actress, vaudevillian
Golden Age star of High Sierra, Sergeant York and Yankee Doodle Dandy who began as the youngest of Detroit's singing Brodel sisters in Depression-era vaudeville.
- Born
Detroit, Michigan- Died
Los Angeles, California
aged 90- Birth name
- Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel
- Also known as
- Joan Brodel
- Detroit years
- 1925–1930s
- Field
- Film & TV, Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Joan Leslie was born Joan Brodel in Detroit in 1925, the youngest of three daughters in a Catholic family of Irish descent. When the Depression squeezed the family, her musical older sisters Betty and Mary, who played saxophone and banjo, took to the vaudeville stage with little Joan, and the act became known as The Three Brodels. Joan stole the show with impressions of Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier and Jimmy Durante. Touring kept the girls moving between Catholic schools in Detroit, Toronto and Montreal. In 1936, performing in New York, eleven-year-old Joan caught the eye of an MGM scout; after small parts she moved to Warner Bros., which renamed her Joan Leslie. At sixteen and seventeen she was the leading lady of High Sierra, Sergeant York and Yankee Doodle Dandy. A devout Catholic, she later devoted much of her time to charity work.
Highlights
- Youngest of The Three Brodels, a Detroit sister act in vaudeville
- Co-starred in High Sierra and Sergeant York (both 1941)
- Played opposite James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
- Honored by the Catholic Theater Guild in 1947