1960s screen icon Joy Harmon, who wowed fans in Cool Hand Luke, has died aged 87.
Harmon, known for her sultry turn as car-washer Lucille in the 1967 classic with Paul Newman, passed away at her Los Angeles-area home on Tuesday, surrounded by her loved ones, a family member confirmed to TMZ.
The actress, who later pivoted to running a successful bakery in Burbank, California, had been sick with pneumonia for several weeks before her death.
Harmon was said to have ‘fought until the end’ and was expected to recover before her death, and was even working at her Aunt Joy’s bakery the day before she was taken into hospital.
Her family member told the publication she spent ‘one to two weeks in the hospital, followed by a several-week stint at a rehabilitation center, and then returned home to spend her final days on hospice care and with her loved ones.’
She also appeared in films including Village of the Giants, Angel in my Pocket, and One Way Wahine as well as TV roles on Bewitched, The Odd Couple and Batman.
Harmon moved away from her Hollywood career to focus on raising her three children with her ex-husband Jeff Gourson.
Her family remembered Harmon as a ‘positive thinker full of life and vibrancy, and certainly had no problem spreading joy throughout her life.’
She is survived by her three children and nine grandchildren.
Born Patricia Joy Harmon in Queens in 1940, she was a newsreel model by the age of three before her family moved to Connecticut, where she was raised.
As a teenager she made finalist in the Miss Connecticut pageant and began her stage career locally in Bridgeport, kick-starting the process that led to her Broadway debut at the age of 18 in the play Make a Million.
Her Hollywood career was born when Groucho Marx discovered her on his quiz show, which in later years became known as You Bet Your Life.
In the 1960s she jobbed around on such beloved TV series of the time as The Beverly Hillbillies, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Burke’s Law and Bewitched.
However her best-remembered show was as a blonde called Lucille in Cool Hand Luke, who suggestively washes her car and prances around for the benefit of an increasingly overheated group of inmates doing prison labor nearby.
The three-minute scene at once made her an enduring pinup of the 1960s, heralding the increasingly open sexuality of the emerging New Hollywood.
