Biography

Joan Gail Bradshaw is the daughter of John Powers Bradshaw (1907-1987) and Mary Elizabeth Merkle (1912-1998), who married in 1935 in Carter County, Oklahoma. After Joan's birth in 1936, the family settled eventually in Houston, Texas, where her father owned an ice cream company. He also acquired some horses and Joan began riding as early as age 3.

Joan was listed as a sophomore student at Houston's John Reagan High School in the 1952 school yearbook. It turned out to be her final school year. She quit school at age 15. She entered several beauty pageants and various beach contests. She won her first beauty contest at age 16. Joan was crowned Miss Texas USA on July 4, 1953, in only the second year of the pageant, and was a semi-finalist (top 15) in the Miss USA pageant held in Long Beach, California, on July 16, 1953. The Miss Universe pageant was held at the same time and venue in those days. Joan competed but did not win. She later admitted, like many of the other girls competing, that she was under the minimum age of 18 required for the pageant. Her physical description at that time was 5 feet, 4 inches tall, 113-15 pounds, brunette, brown eyes, with measurements of 36-23-36. Her bust size increased to 38 a few years later. Her talents for the pageant were singing, sport, and ice skating.

Joan returned to Houston where she worked as a receptionist for the Texas Company, which later became Texaco. Eventually, she went to New York and became the girl who danced the mystery dance on the weekly Arthur Murray Party television show. She met actress Jean Simmons, who suggested a movie career. So she headed west. She scored ten acting roles in her first 14 months in Hollywood and became a starlet and model in the mid- to late 1950s. She scored a social coup at celebrity clothier Sy Devore's Halloween party by arriving with Elvis Presley in 1957.

At age 25 in 1961, she married 56 year-old movie producer, Frank Ross (1904-1990), and she promised to give up her acting career forever. She did. Contrary to erroneous reports, the gorgeous Joan Bradshaw so famously photographed by Earl Leaf walking down Hollywood and Vine with her toy poodle in September 1957 did not go on to become a successful movie producer. The producer by the same name is a different person.

Eventually she returned to her home state of Texas, where she operated a tiki bar and motel for several years. She sold her bar and still splits her time between South Padre Island, Texas, and Los Angeles, California.
- IMDb mini biography by: M. Broussard