Career Highlights: Little Shop of Horrors, The Doris Day Show: Season 05, The Doris Day Show: Season 04
First Major Screen Credit: Little Shop of Horrors (1960)
Biography
Kooky, chipper comic actress Jackie Joseph was a chorus dancer when she gained prominence in The Billy Barnes Revue, in which she appeared with her future husband Ken Berry. Not long afterward, Joseph was hired as Los Angeles' first TV weather girl. In films at least since 1955's Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki, Joseph's most fondly remembered screen role was pea-brained Audrey Fulquard in the original Little Shop of Horrors (1960). A prolific TV actress, Joseph was a comedy-ensemble player on the first Bob Newhart Show (1961-62) and played dizzy secretary Jackie Parker during the final 1972-73 season of The Doris Day Show. She briefly put her acting career on the back burner in the 1970s to become an LA TV host and tireless animal activist. After her costly, traumatic divorce from Ken Berry, Joseph organized L.A.D.I.E.S., a support group for ex-wives of celebrities. Jackie Joseph resumed her film activities in the 1980s; she was reunited with her Little Shop of Horrors co-star Dick Miller as the ill-fated Futtermans in Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1989). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Joseph was born in Los Angeles, California. She began her entertainment career as a featured performer and singer in the Billy Barnes Revues of the 1950s and '60s, with future husband and actor Ken Berry. She was married to Berry, with whom she adopted two children, from May 29, 1960 until 1977. Joseph has since remarried; she and husband David Lawrence reside in a quiet suburb of Los Angeles.
In the early 1980s, Joseph helped form an organization for celebrity wives overcoming divorce. The group, which included Lynn Landon, Patti Palmer Lewis, and Carol Lawrence, went on talk shows (such as Phil Donahue's) discussing the foilbles of celebrity split-ups. In recent years she has been heavily involved with the Screen Actors Guild as well as organizations providing care for stray animals. She has been a columnist for Toluca Lake's newspaper, "The Tolucan Times," where she often ends her column with the phrase, "We'll talk."