Actress Joanna Barnes on ‘Parent Trap’ and Its Remake, Dies at Age 87


Her multiple screen roles include Joanna Barnes, which includes the collaborative fiancee of a divorced father in the 1961 film “The Parent Trap,” and the character’s mother in the remake 37 years later – and a successful second career as a writer while continuing to enjoy success as an actress – due April 29. He died at his home in The Sea Ranch, California. She was 87 years old.

Her friend Sally Jackson said the cause was cancer.

Ms. Barnes’ role in the hit Disney movie “The Parent Trap” was part of her first five intense years in Hollywood, starting with television series such as “Playhouse 90” and “Cheyenne” and then moving up to supporting roles in “Auntie Mame.” ” (1958), “Tarzan, the Ape Man” (1959) with Rosalind Russell and starring Denny Miller.

Life magazine featured Ms. Barnes in a photo post promoting “Tarzan.”

One section of the article said, “The silk-dressed socialite above is the same naked tree climber to the right – Miss Joanna Barnes from Boston and Hollywood.” “She’s the latest of 20 girls to play the genteel British woman Jane in Tarzan movies, and MGM insists.”

In “The Parent Trap” (1961), Hayley Mills stars as twin sisters who meet and plot to reunite their divorced parents, Miss Barnes played Brian’s skinny fortune hunter who is dating the girls’ father. Keith. When the movie was remade 37 years later with Lindsay Lohan in the lead role, Miss Barnes played the mother of her former character, played by Elaine Hendrix.

“She had no judgment about being in a reshoot,” the film’s director, Nancy Meyers, said in a phone interview. “And he was like, ‘Cut it out!’ He was one of those people you wanted to keep talking to after you said that.”

Ms. Barnes was never a big star and in the 1960s she started finding something different from acting.

In 1967 he hosted the ABC television series Dateline: Hollywood, where he took audiences backstage on studio tours and interviewed the stars. He wrote a collaborative column called Touching Your Home, and a book on interior decoration called “Starting From Scratch” (1968).

Her first novel, “The Deceivers” (1970), was a sexy Hollywood reveal revolving around a former child actress and the powerful people in her orbit.

“Joanna Barnes is her mastermind Jacqueline Susann,” critic John Leonard wrote in The New York Times, citing the author of the spoiled 1966 epic “Valley of the Dolls.” “A few of the characters in ‘Deceivers’ appear to have been stamped from the old Salters; sex grows like grass between each plot block; and as in many first novels, everything is resolved in one big party. But Miss Barnes is the perfect guide for tourists in plastic cactus land.”

Also “Who Is Carla Hart?” She also wrote her novels. (1973); “Pastora” (1980), a New York Times bestseller about the rise of a 19th-century woman in San Francisco society; and “Silverwood” (1985).

“Acting and writing feed off each other,” he told The Associated Press. “When I start to feel limited to writing, I make time for acting.”

And socializing. In 1971, she briefly dated Henry Kissinger, who was then the national security adviser to President Richard M. Nixon. When Maxine Cheshire of The Washington Post reported that she and Mr. Kissinger were attending a party in Hollywood, she stated that Mrs. Barnes had written “The Deceivers” and that “Kissinger had not read it”.

Miss Barnes was born on November 15, 1934 in Boston and grew up in Hingham, Massachusetts. His father, John, was an insurance executive and his mother, Alice (Mutch) Barnes, was a housewife. He studied English at Smith College and earned his BA in 1956—the year he earned his screen credit for the first time in the series “Tales of the 77th Bengal Lancers.”

In 1961, The St. Petersburg (now Tampa Bay) Times, he was kicked out of the Boston Social Register, where he said he disapproved of the cast. He acted in the movie “Spartacus” starring Kirk Douglas.

“She played a corrupt Roman woman,” she said. “Delicious part.”

Over the next three decades, he appeared in many TV series such as “Bachelor Father”, “77 Sunset Strip”, “Love American Style”, “Murder, She Wrote” and “Trapper John, MD” during the 1965-66 season. He was a regular on “The Trials of O’Brien,” a short-lived series about a defense attorney played by Peter Falk. She played his ex-wife.

He is survived by his stepdaughters Laura and Louise Warner; his stepson John Warner; and her sisters Lally Barnes Freeman and Judith Barnes Wood. Her marriages to Richard Herndon and Lawrence Dobkin ended in divorce; Her marriage to Jack Lionel Warner also ended.

Despite all her on-screen success, her interest in acting had waned – until a remake of “The Parent Trap” came out.

“His role was small but memorable and I certainly didn’t need to tell him how to play it,” Ms. Meyers said in an email. “He knew exactly what to do and played to the end.”



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