Joan Tompkins | |
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Tompkins (right) as Susan Price Wells with Cameron Prud'homme and Charme Allen in the radio serial David Harum, 1947.
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Born |
New York, USA |
July 9, 1915
Died | January 29, 2005 Orange County, California, U.S. |
(aged 89)
Occupation | Actress |
Spouse(s) | Karl Swenson (widowed in 1978) |
Children | Four stepsons, including Steven Swenson |
Joan Tompkins, Mrs. Joan Swenson (July 9, 1915 – January 29, 2005) was an American actress of television, film, radio, and stage, who co-founded with her husband, Karl Swenson, an acting company in Beverly Hills, California. In the 1962-1963 television season, Tompkins played legal secretary Trudy Wagner in twenty-eight episodes of Edmond O'Brien's NBC legal drama Sam Benedict, co-starring Richard Rust. From 1967-1970, she guest starred nine times as Lorraine Miller in Fred MacMurray's CBS situation comedy, My Three Sons, with her last appearance in the episode "St. Louis Blues" on December 19, 1970.
According to the Social Security Death Index, Tompkins, listed as Joan Swenson at death, was living in New York when she procured her Social Security number, probably in the late 1930s. In 1938, at the age of twenty-three, she joined Henry Fonda in performing plays in White Plains, New York. Thereafter, she performed on radio in the soap opera role of Nora Drake on This Is Nora Drake, which ran on CBS radio until 1959. She appeared on Broadway in New York City in stage productions of Pride and Prejudice and My Sister Eileen.