Joan Barclay

Biography

Born Mary Elizabeth Greear, the actress best known as Joan Barclay came out to Hollywood when her mother, anxious to leave Minnesota's cold climate, put "Florida" and "California" in a hat and let young Mary Elizabeth draw. One of her earliest acting jobs was a role in The Gaucho (1927) with Douglas Fairbanks, who wanted to make her his next leading lady even though she was only 12(!). She was under contract to Warners in the early 1930s and to RKO in the 1940s, and co-starred in many "B" westerns and serials in the interim. She left movies in the mid-'40s to marry a wealthy man in the rent-a-car business, the first of her three husbands.