We always like to say when we see or talk about Joanna Barnes that she is “real top drawer”, quoting her snobby, old money debutante in Auntie Mame (1958). As a matter of fact, Barnes’s two most famous films cast her as someone the audience didn’t want to see marry a character, though for different reasons. Coming from Boston and going to a private college when she was young, you must wonder whether Barnes’s two most famous roles were based off people she knew. Barnes left her eastern home for sunny California to become an actress, something that probably shocked some of the people from her hometown. She began appearing in uncredited roles in films during the late ‘50s, occasionally getting slightly meatier roles on TV. She was always easy to recognize, with her blonde hair and darting, smoldering eyes (when Cake wrote “And eyes that burn like cigarettes”, they must have meant someone like her). Her first credited role was in the action film, Violent Road (1958). She was also credited in the drama Home Before Dark (1958) in a supporting role. Her famous role as Gloria Upson in Auntie Mame (1958) was one of her first credited appearances and set the tone for many of her parts to follow.

Gloria stood out in the comedy because of her deep, fake-Bryn Mawr sounding husk of a voice and her vapid mannerisms that made her a completely wrong fiancée for Auntie Mame’s special nephew Patrick. One of the most famous scenes in the movie (maybe even THE most famous scene) had Barnes interrupt a sentimental moment between Mame and Patrick to tell a long-winded, boring story about playing ping pong at her country club. The anecdote included her trying to sell the line, “-and I stepped on the ping pong ball!”, which didn’t impress anyone listening to her story, but seems to have impressed audiences of the film. It’s one of the most quoted lines from the classic and has been referenced in several forms of media (it’s heard in the background of several Tina Fey shows). While Gloria was a role to be proud of, Barnes’s next film role sounded promising on paper, but didn’t live up to its hype. She played Jane in MGM’s last attempt to relive their Tarzan hurrah with Tarzan, the Ape Man (1959), which may not have been the hit the studio needed, but its cheesiness has given it some fans.

After spending a lot of time making TV appearances, Barnes was ready to be back on the big screen again, this time in a successful epic. While her role in Spartacus (1960) was small in the star-studded cast, she got to recall some of the snobbish qualities that she used for Gloria Upson. Her next film role was her other best-known role as the scheming, gold-digging Vicky in the Disney classic The Parent Trap (1961). Like with Gloria, you don’t want to see Brian Keith get together with the younger, money hungry Vicky, especially since it puts a hold on matchmaking him with his ex-wife, Maureen O’Hara. Barnes later reprised her role as Vicky in the remake The Parent Trap (1998) where an in-joke is hinted that she is the same character from the original who has raised her own gold-digging spawn, because her name is still Vicky.

Barnes stuck more to making TV appearances, only appearing in the occasional movie. She was Gene Nelson’s leading lady in The Purple Hills (1961) and had a supporting role in Goodbye Charlie (1964) where she felt largely wasted (not the only cast member in that film to be). Barnes got a longer television gig when she made the law show “The Trials of O’Brien” with Peter Falk, which got some recognition at the Emmys, but only lasted a season. Barnes’s film roles, however, picked up when Barnes and her TV co-star Peter Falk made Too Many Thieves (1966). She also had a flashy supporting role in the fun John Wayne film The War Wagon (1967), a plot like his previous hits Rio Bravo (1959) and El Dorado (1966). Barnes was paired with a hot-headed Kirk Douglas as the film hints that they’re on-again off-again lovers that reunite if he’s ever her way. She also recalled some of her earlier performances in Don’t Make Waves (1967) as Robert Webber’s socialite wife who leaves him to dalliance with Claudia Cardinale, but the girls all get together in the end to get paired with their proper partners.

Barnes made her last film appearance with the remake of The Parent Trap and mostly devoted herself to TV work by the ‘70s. Instead of working primarily as an actress, Barnes devoted herself to writing, including having her own syndicated column and publishing her books (she majored in English in college). She wrote both novels and had books/columns about home decorating. While Barnes might have played socialites with their noses in the air, Barnes proved herself to be an efficient woman in both her acting profession and her writing career.

~Bianca