Joan Hackett

OP, she grew up in Queens. She had to do [italic]something.[/italic]

She was limited

She looks very beautiful here.

She reminds me of Sean Young.

Her arms were very toned for that era

Dottie!

She was in a relatively forgotten Diabolique remake, Reflections of Murder, which costarred Tuesday Weld and Sam Waterston.

I always found her a compelling actress.

Not bad, but forgettable. The 1960s-1970s had dozens of these pretty starlets.

The only thing I've seen her in was a '70s TV horror movie called "The Possessed," which was filmed in my hometown—she was very good in it. It also features a (very hot) pre-"Star Wars" Harrison Ford, as well as Dinah Manoff, PJ Soles, and Diana Scarwid. Kind of a silly flick, but entertaining. Hackett plays the headmistress of a boarding school where students are encountering demonic forces. Hackett is the primary target of the titular possession.

If there's a gay person here who hasn't seen Joan Hackett in THE LAST OF SHEILA or THE GROUP, they're not really gay. Or they're under 40.

Loved her in Only When I Laugh (1981)

D-list actress Sharon Farrell was good friends with Hackett for 15 years. When they were struggling actresses in NYC, Sharon lived with Hackett and Hackett’s mother and brother. Sharon also became friends with Joan’s husband Richard Mulligan. (Mulligan and Hackett both had bad tempers and had fights/screaming matches with each other constantly.)

Their friendship continued in LA but eventually ended because Farrell was uncomfortable with Hackett’s practice of shoplifting cosmetics when they went shopping together. Hackett called it “sampling” and justified the practice by telling Farrell she would return to buy more if she liked it. Farrell was very passive and Hackett was aggressive and didn’t appreciate Farrell’s opinion. Hackett just ghosted Farrell. When she heard Hackett was sick, she reached out but Hackett wanted nothing to do with her.

When they were still friends Hackett convinced Farrell to go to a clinic with her in Geneva where they both received fetal lamb cell injections. Farrell thinks she may have known she was sick by then.

Hackett’s gravestone reads “Go Away, I’m Sleeping.”

Damm a tough broad

She made the earrings she wore to the Oscars out of Christmas decorations.

Was she related to Buddy?

I read Carrie Fisher paid her medical bills.

Was Fisher just a good friend (really good!) or more?

I used to always get her confused with Blythe Danner.

One of my favorite movies from childhood is "Support Your Local Sheriff" and I love her in it.

Hmm, that link doesn't seem to be working now. Here's something better...

Wasn't she Sapphic? I remember hearing rumors for ages about that when she was still around.

I've read those rumors on here r20.

She was married to Richard Mulligan for 7 years. (one of his 4 wives.)

She stole scenes as well as cosmetics!

The play they're talking about on Cavett ("Night Watch") was made into mediocre movie starring Elizabeth Taylor.

I used to jerk off to her as a teen, and desperately wanted to fuck the shit out of her

How was she related to Buddy?

He was her son.

R25, are you also R15?

R27 No, did R15 get an answer?

I thought she was a very good actress. I remember her most for a tv movie horror trilogy called "Dead of Night." It was reminiscent of the tv horror movie "Trilogy of Terror" which featured Karen Black and the Zuni doll. Dan Curtis directed it and Richard Matheson wrote it; they did the same for "Dead of Night." As with "Trilogy of Terror" the first two stories are ok but the last one is unforgettable. Hackett's segment is entitled "Bobby." She plays a despondent mother whose son has recently died; she will do ANYTHING to get him back. That's all I'll say about it. The ending was quite a shocker.

Her version of Diabolique is quite good.

She had a kind of Myrna Loy/Jean Arthur thing going on early in her career and would have been a brilliant comedienne in screwball comedies of the 1930s.

I always really liked her and want to know where R12 got all that juicy gossip about her and Sharon Farrell. I've been trying to dig up info on Joan for years but turned up next to nothing!

R32 Sharon’s memoir. It’s horribly edited and she’s a train wreck but it has tons of anecdotes about Hackett, Steve McQueen, Bruce Lee, Barbara Hershey, Jack Palance, Jack Lord, etc. She worked with a lot of people. These under the radar books are the best for new stories.

From the reviews, Sharon's book seems to be mostly about how every male Hollywood star raped her and/or stole all her money, so I think I'll give it a miss. But thank you for the tea about Joan!

She’s mentioned briefly in the book AT DANCETERIA when the main character goes to see a matinee of “Only When I Laugh” at the Orpheum.

R35 She was theatrically trained, and back then, actors were trained to speak with that "aristocratic" accent. Reminds me of Natalie Schafer, who was born in New Jersey, but sounded like she was from Britain.

Was she any relation to Buddy?

Christine Baranski just gave an interview and was asked about her crisp waspy accent. She said she was born in Buffalo NY to a working class Polish family and developed her accent to essentially get up and get out. Hackett probably did the same thing, as have countless other actors. If you think a out it, it’s actually a form of self taught acting and at a very early age.

Are you any relation to r15, r37?

I remember Joan and Denise Nicholas of Room 222 in some TV movie called “Five Desperate Women”. Robert Conrad was in it. And that bottom feeder Stefanie Powers…

It saddens me to realize that Joan Hackett was reduced to making nothing more than TV movie of the week potboilers in her final years when her career began with so much promise.

It’s nice that she at least received one Oscar nomination during her career.

R20/R21, I'm pretty sure Joan came out after divorcing Mulligan. No one seemed to notice.

She came into the business when ‘naturalness’ and ‘authenticity’ were becoming the norm. Her affected acting style was probably out of fashion, and limited her to roles where that strong mid Atlantic accent was appropriate.

She apparently heard Fran Drescher and went in another direction

I had the impression at the time, perhaps wrongly, that Hackett made those TV movies towards the end of her career because she'd been diagnosed with cancer and wanted the money to be assured necessary comforts and insurance. Also, wondered if she cam out because, again, she had nothing to lose. Sad.

Those TV movies were made in the seventies when she was still in her prime. And she was twenty five years older than Fran is, so I don’t get that connection either.

I love a continental Culver City MGM accent as much as the next homo, but for some reason Hackett's nutty front-of-the-mouth placement always renders her acting totally false for me, it's never quite spontaneous, it's like she's giving a series of reaction shots or doing the other side of someone else's over the shoulder shot all the time.

R46, insurance etc would have come through the union, yes?

The coming out stuff happened way earlier, like a decade.

I get that from Barbara Parkins too, R48.

I remember this. Strange twist at the end.

We just watched Reflections of Murder last night and it was surprisingly good for a TV movie. But Joan and Tuesday's haircuts were egregious. I mean REALLY ugly, even for the '70s.

Hackett was in many TV shows starting in 1958 and made her film debut in 1966 in The Group after which she made a few films, but of her 69 credits on IMDB only 9 are for theatrically released films.

There's an awful TV anthology remake of Rebecca with JH as the second Mrs. deWinter that was on Amazon Prime a while back.

I don't hear much of an accent. I hear a bit of the boroughs here and there. She produces a fabulous, smooth, purring glamazon cadence. Heard it from other glamorous URBAN women of that era - uptown and downtown. It fits that she was moody and histrionic with the shoplifting and such.

It suddenly occurs to me that Andrea Martin could put on this voice for a character.

It's not so much an accent as a tone, like a low-grade Sally Kellerman

R52 “We?” Who is “we?” Edward & Mrs. Simpson? Bogie & Bacall? Ann-Margret & Roger Fucking Smith?

Oh, I’d forgotten Five Desperate Women! What a fun movie! Only When I Laugh is a favorite of mine. Hackett is great in it.

Joan chewed up the scenery in the best possible way as a Teri Shields-type in the delightfully trashy Paper Dolls TV movie.

Hacker has a classic nosejob and a bit of a classic affected actress sound. Christine Baranski has mastered them both so well that she is truly aristocratic.

I've never heard of Hackett, but she is not as exotic sounding as Kathleen Turner. Turner was born in Europia.

I like her in "Will Penny."

Joan was born in the East Harlem, she was of Italian and Irish descent. Joan's parents were John and Mary (née Esposito) Hackett, she grew up in East Harlem, Elmhurst and in Brooklyn. Joan was briefly a model, she dropped out of high school during her final year

Joan's mother was from Naples, Italy, her father was of Irish ancestry. Joan was raised Catholic, she attended various Catholic schools.

Joan modeling in 1966.

Didn’t she body double for Paula Prentiss?

From a previous DL thread:

[Quote]Marsha Mason did leave Neil Simon for actress Joan Hackett. This fact was made public on tv by the gossip columnist, Marilyn Beck, who was asked by Marsha & Neil not to go public with the news. She did anyway. Not too long after that Joan died of cancer. I always felt bad for Marsha and how things turned out.

R65 You awake yet? MM left NS for JH? WTF?

Have you ever SEEN Neil Simon, R66? Ewww.

R67 what I haven't seen are any links to support the story of MM leaving NS for JH!

Wait, what? [bold]Marsha Mason left Neil Simon for Joan Hackett? [/bold]

Do tell!!

In Andy Warhol's Diaries he says that Mason left Simon for a woman. He doesn't mention Hackett. I would hope Joan would have better taste than either of them.

Love must have blossomed during the filming of Only When I Laugh (1981)

^^^ both were Oscar nominated for their roles in this film.

Wow, she looks very good in the screenshot. Foxy, even.

Otherwise she could only be described as a handsome woman.

Joan's haughty accent is interesting, that's definitely not a Brooklyn or Queens accent.

A few female friends from Queens, who attended private grammar and high schools in Manhattan, have that sort of accent.

Whatever happened to Dick Cavett? As a kid I watched his talk show. Janis Joplin claimed to have fucked him!

Joan won the Golden Globe for Only When I Laugh. I think she attended the Oscars that year in a wheelchair. He career was taking off...and then she died.

R74 did Janis use a strap on?

The Decades Channel had a marathon of “Love American Style” last weekend and I taped some to see who would pop up. Joan Hackett (in a blonde fright wig!) and Richard Mulligan were in an episode about two jurors who fall in love while sequestered during a trial. Guess this was filmed during their marriage.

I always liked her.

Funnily enough, Hackett's voice reminds me prefisely of Barbara Parkins as Roxanne in [/italic] The Mephisto Waltz [/italic] .

Hackett doesn't sound haughty to me, as you describe her sound. R74. Modulated, taught, artificial... however one prefers describing such a cultivated accent, it doesn't necessarily equate to sounding haughty, however unnatural it may have been for a middle-class young woman from Queens, Harlem, and the other aforementioned boroughs to sound like her.

In the interview with Cavett she comes across as warm, sincere, and somewhat self-deprecating. She uses slang, as well as less formal vocabulary. She seems more down to earth, rather than haughty. It's always fascinating to me how Americans perceive accents. Like R57, I detect a bit of the boroughs here and there peppered throughout her speech.

^ sorry, meant to have typed as R55 observes about "the boroughs"

r75 see r14