Joan Benedict, who starred on the unique Steve Allen Present and Candid Digital camera and portrayed the tyrannical resort queen Leona Helmsley in a one-woman stage present, has died. She was 96.
Benedict died June 24 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Heart in Los Angeles of problems from a stroke, a household spokesperson introduced.
Benedict was married to actor John Myhers, who performed personnel man Bert Bratt within the 1967 movie adaptation of How you can Achieve Enterprise With out Actually Attempting, from 1962 till his 1992 loss of life and to Oscar-winning actor Rod Steiger (On the Waterfront, Within the Warmth of the Evening) from 2000 till his loss of life in 2002.
She then had a relationship with actor Jeremy Slate (Hell’s Angels ’69, One Life to Reside) till he died in 2006 from esophageal most cancers at 80.
“Each of my husbands, and my lifetime companion, Jeremy, have been fantastic males who revered me as an actress,” she mentioned in 2016. “All of them died from completely different types of most cancers, so my recollections are typically bittersweet, however with no regrets.”
Benedict was a member of Allen Funt’s inventory firm for Candid Digital camera. In two of her funniest bits for the CBS actuality hit, she wore a feather in her hat and annoyingly tickled males with it as they sat subsequent to her on the airport and made it inconceivable for male passersby to gentle her cigarette in a cellphone sales space.
“Basically, it’s performing,” she mentioned of engaged on the present. “I can’t chuckle or the entire stunt is damaged up.”
Earlier, as a part of the ensemble on NBC’s The Steve Allen Present, she carried out in comedy skits and was the spokesperson for Hazel Bishop cosmetics.
Born in Brooklyn on July 21, 1927, Benedict was raised in a house close to Prospect Park. She first carried out as a faucet dancer at age 7 on the Brooklyn Academy of Music, then studied on the Rome Opera Ballet College, in Paris and with Robert Lewis and Stella Adler at The Actors Studio in New York.
Benedict labored on the community sport present Masquerade Occasion, and for Butterfield 8 (1960), she served because the stand-in for Elizabeth Taylor and performed a psychiatrist’s secretary.
She later confirmed up in The Joyful Hooker Goes to Washington (1977) and on episodes of The Smith Household, Fantasy Island, T.J. Hooker, Resort, The Trials of Rosie O’Neill and Dollhouse and had recurring roles on the cleaning soap operas Normal Hospital, Days of Our Lives and Capitol.
After Myhers’ loss of life at age 70, Benedict reunited with Steiger — the 2 had a quick romance when she was 19 — earlier than she grew to become his fifth spouse. In 2001, they appeared collectively within the movie A Month of Sundays and within the telefilm The Flying Dutchman.
Steiger died at age 77 of problems from surgical procedure for a gallbladder tumor.
Benedict wrote her memoir, Brooklyn Child, revealed in 2016, and along with her work in Leona — the play takes place in a jail cell — she starred in one other one-woman stage present, the autobiographical The Loves of My Life.
Survivors embrace her daughter, Claudia, and her granddaughters, Hanna and Ashley.