Joan Carroll

Joan Carroll (born January 18, 1932, Paterson, New Jersey) was a former child actress in movies between 1938 and 1945.

Childhood career

Carroll was born Joan Felt in Paterson, New Jersey, to Wright G. and Freida B Felt. Her father was a government electrical engineer, and her mother was a club and stage pianist. Carroll took dramatic lessons when she was very young and was performing locally by age 4. Her family moved to California in 1936, where she received a bit part in The First Baby (1936) (billed as Mary Joan Felt).

Carroll developed into an excellent singer and tap dancer at the Fanchon and Marco Dancing School in Hollywood,^[1] and became an accomplished child actress. Her stage name was changed to Carol and then Carroll,^[2] and between 1937 and 1940 she appeared in supporting roles in several movies. Her big break came the 1940 film, Primrose Path, as Ginger Rogers's younger sister, for which she won a Critics Award. The same year she became the first child star to be summoned from Hollywood in order to appear in the leading role in a Broadway musical, Panama Hittie, which ran from October 30, 1940 to January 03, 1942 and gave her another huge personal success.^[3]

Carroll became RKO Radio Pictures' resident juvenile personality in both "A" and "B" pictures. RKO starred Carroll in the leading role with Ruth Warrick in two zany comedy vehicles, Obliging Young Lady (1941) and Petticoat Larceny (1943).

She continued to work in films as an adolescent, but less frequently. Two of her best-remembered pictures came from this period: Meet Me In St. Louis (1944) as Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien's sister, and The Bells of St. Mary's (1945), in which she played a troubled teenager with an estranged father.

Later life

After The Bells of St. Mary's in 1945, Carroll retired. She married in 1951 with James Krack and had four children.^[4]

Joan and her brother donated a historic family lamp to the Nevada State Museum on July 7, 2011.^[5] The lamp was originally given to her father, Wright Lafayette Felt, who was the Public Works Administrator for Nevada at the time the Hoover Dam was built. The lamp was created out of materials used in the construction of the 155-mile, $900,000 power line to the Hoover Dam, and was presented to him by the Lincoln County Power District No. 1 on Sept. 25, 1937, for his assistance with the project.

Filmography

• The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
• Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)
• Champagne Charlie (1944)
• Tomorrow the World (1944)
• Petticoat Larceny (1943)
• Obliging Young Lady (1941)
• Laddie (1940)
• Primrose Path (1940)
• Anne of Windy Poplars (1940)
• Barricade (1939)
• Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939)
• Two Sisters (1938)
• Walking Down Broadway (1938)
• Lancer Spy (1937)
• One Mile from Heaven (1937)
• The First Baby (1936)

Bibliography

• Best, Marc. Those Endearing Young Charms: Child Performers of the Screen. South Brunswick and New York: Barnes & Co., 1971, pp. 20-24.

External links

• Joan Carroll at the Internet Movie Database
• Joan Carroll at the Internet Broadway Database
  

References