She played Tarzan’s Jane opposite both Johnny Weissmuller and Lex Barker, taking over the iconic role from Maureen O’Sullivan, but now at the age of 92, Brenda Joyce has passed away. Born Betty Leabo in Missouri but raised in LA, she became a fashion model while at college, which caught the attention of 20th Century Fox who signed her up for a movie career.
She was supposedly punished by the studio for her impulsive marriage to Owen Ward and relegated to B movies, after which she started to lose interest in her screen career. However when Maureen O’Sullican stopped playing Jane, Joyce was wooed to replace her. She played the role starting in 1945 with Tarzan and the Amazon, and appeared in three more Tarzan films with Johnny Weissmuller, as well as Lex Barker’s first excurion as the jungle man, Tarzan’s Magic Fountain.
After that she left the role and the movie business and never appeared on screen again. She moved to Washington D.C. and worked for the US Immigration Department.
Joyce died of pneumonia at a nursing home after suffering from dementia for a decade.