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”TOO LONG AT THE FAIR”

One of the brightest and most talented comediennes of the late fifties and sixties was without a doubt the blond and buxom Joyce Jameson. Joyce appeared to great effect alongside such comic icons as Red Skelton, Danny Kaye, and especially Steve Allen, who really understood Joyce’s gift for impersonation, not to mention her genius for comic timing, making her the perfect partner for these master clowns of television.

Joyce achieved her first real taste of success with the BILLY BARNES’ REVIEW which was the toast of Hollywood and New York during the fifties and sixties. Such stars as Lucille Ball and Bette Davis would attend whatever Billy Barnes cared to showcase. Billy was celebrated for his uncanny ability to write tailor-made material for individual stars like Angela Lansbury and was in great demand writing material for not only the Academy Award telecasts but for the Carol Burnett show, the Sonny and Cher comedy hour, and for Cher when she went solo. Billy Barnes created almost single-handidly “the revue” as we would come to know it, creating yet another important element of American musical comedy.

Joyce Jameson became at once Billy’s muse and then his wife, introducing many classic comedy routines and songs to both coasts. Joyce did spot-on impersonations of Jayne Mansfield and Marilyn Monroe to such an extent that most of her film roles would exploit these sketches she created with Billy. Her most famous Marilyn impersonation on film would be for another “Billy,” the great director Billy Wilder who cast her as the dizzy blond who is led up to Lemmon’s apartment for a tryst in his classic THE APARTMENT (1960) with Jack Lemmon (both director and star had already worked with the real Marilyn in SOME LIKE IT HOT). Jack Lemmon became an instant fan of Joyce’s comic talents and used her again in GOOD NEIGHBOR SAM (1963). Lemmon would remain a lifelong admirer of her work.

Joyce Jameson would enter my life as a result of the lasting impression her classic performances made in two horror-comedies, holding her own alongside Vincent Price and Peter Lorre, produced by the now legendary American International Pictures during the “horror boom” of the sixties. Her first film for AIP, TALES OF TERROR (1962) broke new ground by displaying the newly-discovered comic timing of Price and Lorre in the popular BLACK CAT segment of the portmanteau film. Joyce shines with a performance that brings both humor and pathos as “Annabelle” the neglected wife of a very inebriated Peter Lorre who has the misfortune to bring home his new-found drinking companion, the wine connoisseur Vincent Price. The two become lovers and suffer a fate worthy of well… Edgar Allen Poe. This sequence was so popular that American International made their next Poe film, THE RAVEN (1963), an all out comedy, again with Price and Lorre, but they would soon reunite their TALES OF TERROR stars for yet another romp in the cemetery, originally entitled THE GRAVESIDE STORY, which boasted an all star cast of “ghouls” including Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone and that newly formed ‘comedy team” the critics dubbed “an unholy Laurel and Hardy,” Vincent Price and Peter Lorre. In a clever change of pace, Joyce would now play the neglected wife of undertaker Vincent Price who prefers the bottle to his opera-singing diva (very off-key) of a wife who finds comfort and then true love with her husband’s partner – fellow undertaker Peter Lorre. THE COMEDY OF TERRORS (1964), as it would come to be known, was not a commercial success, and instead of being a turning point in the studio’s output of “horror comedies,” it signaled the demise of such projects, and the following year Vincent Price was resigned to keeping his tongue even more firmly in his cheek and sadly had to make due without Peter Lorre, who died suddenly during the release of what would prove to be their last film together THE COMEDY OF TERRORS. This would also be the last time Joyce Jameson would play a leading role in a motion picture.

Fortunately time has been rather kind to both films and today, thanks to the advent of home video and the DVD format, a whole new generation of fans has created a substantial cult following for these films, including a renewed appreciation of Joyce Jameson’s considerable comedic talents.

In 1980 I began working on my Corman/Poe book in earnest and to that end started interviewing as many of the principals as I could locate. I had already interviewed Roger Corman and several others when Dick Miller told me where to find Joyce Jameson. She was represented by an old time Hollywood agent named Lew Deuser whose most successful client at that time was Vic Tayback, who had a recurring role on ‘ALICE,’ a then popular sitcom based on the Oscar-winning film ALICE DOSENT LIVE HERE ANYMORE starring Linda Lavin.

After a couple of phone calls to Mr. Deuser’s office I received word that Joyce Jameson would be pleased to meet with me and left her number. Within a week after my call, on a warm summer afternoon, there came a knock at my front door and from my kitchen window I could see this small, rather top-heavy woman wearing an orange parka and clutching a large scrapbook to her ample bosom. From the moment I opened the door, this woman’s beautiful face still reflected her on-screen persona, with delicate features possessing bright joyful eyes exuding a warmth and humor that made her instantly familiar and loving at the same time. Joyce made friends easily and I quickly came under her spell: ”My goodness, you’re a handsome young man, and just my type.” All this as she entered my apartment for the first time. “I have a son Tyler Barnes, he’s very good looking too, and just a little bit younger than you are” “Now where do you want me to begin, as I have a lot to share with you since my career goes way back, honey…all the way to SHOWBOAT, and you have to guess which version.” With that she broke out in that dizzy laughter I remembered so fondly from watching her countless television appearances during my ill-spent youth. I mean this lady taught Herman Munster how to rumba for God’s sake…!

Joyce was, from her own accounts, a woman who found her niche in comedy and was blessed with finding powerful men in show business who recognized her abilities early on, especially Billy Barnes, Sid Caesar and Steve Allen. The one comedy genius she could have done without knowing was Jerry Lewis. Joyce was a regular if you can call it that on Jerry Lewis’s 1963 mammoth two-and-one-half-hour talk show that supposedly cost a million dollars and flopped after just thirteen weeks of broadcasts. Joyce recalled how Lewis would come on to her sexually before and after the tapings and made it clear that what Jerry Lewis wanted Jerry Lewis got…end of story. Joyce said she had never encountered anyone before or since with an ego like Jerry Lewis’.

The two horror comedies were a lark for Joyce as she recalled working with these veteran actors who were in decline from their glory days at Warner Bros and 20th Century Fox, and now fate had forced them to appear in low-budget films at a makeshift studio. She remembered Peter Lorre as a sad little man whose weight problem made it impossible for the black cat of the title to sit on his lap because “Peter didn’t have a lap for the cat to sit on and it would just slide right off onto the floor!” Joyce made a point of saying that both films were shot very quickly and very cheaply. “Especially with Roger on TALES OF TERROR; that one was like twelve days shooting and hurry-up already.”

It was becoming obvious that our interview was turning into an all-day social visit and we were becoming fast friends. I know now that Joyce really needed a friend at this point in her life, and aside from another writer/confidante she trusted named Patrick Agan, who also wrote about the movies (The Rise and Fall of the Love Goddesses), I was about to become her new best friend and escort on short notice.

Joyce had a son by her marriage to Billy Barnes named Tyler, and at that time Tyler was in his early twenties, living in the Bay Area. She was very close to him (he virtually grew up on her film locations and television shoots), yet to her credit she let him live his own life and chose to live alone in a modest home her mother left her in the Wilshire district. She kept two telephones in operation in her house, one was for all business and most of her social calls, and the other phone was kept in her bedroom with a different number. It would be two years before I would know that number and then it still would be too late to really be of any help as I will explain further on…

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