Joan Diener

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joan Diener (February 24, 1930 - May 13, 2006) was an American theatre actress and singer with a three-and-a-half-octave range.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Diener majored in psychology at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York and moonlighted as an actress while still a student. She made her Broadway debut in the 1948 revue Small Wonder, choreographed by Gower Champion and co-starring newcomers Tom Ewell, Alice Pearce, Jack Cassidy, and Mary McCarty.

Diener met her husband, theatre director Albert Marre, when she won the role of Lalume, the seductive wife of the Wazir, in Kismet, winning a Theatre World Award for her performance. They were married three years later and subsequently had a son Adam and a daughter Jennifer.

In 1958, Marre directed a production of At the Grand, a musical adaptation of Vicki Baum's 1930 novel Grand Hotel, in Los Angeles with Diener as an opera diva (a ballerina in the book) who falls in love with a charming, but larcenous, fake baron. (Although the show never reached Broadway, it was revamped drastically more than thirty years later and, directed by Tommy Tune, became the hit Grand Hotel.)

Mitch Leigh's Man of La Mancha also was directed by Marre, who cast his wife as Aldonza, the lusty serving wench envisioned by the deranged Don Quixote as virtuous Dulcinea. The critics were unanimous in praising her portrayal, but she inexplicably was overlooked by the Tony nominations committee. She went on to play the role in London and Amsterdam, in Paris and Brussels in French and, at age 62, she succeeded pop singer Sheena Easton in the 1992 Broadway revival.

Diener reunited with Leigh as composer and Marre as director for both Cry for Us All (1970), which closed after nine performances, and Home Sweet Homer (1975), which never made it past opening night, despite the presence of Yul Brynner as Odysseus.

Diener's most famous stage roles went to others when they reached the screen - Dolores Gray in Kismet and Sophia Loren in La Mancha - and she never had a film career of her own. In addition to appearing on Broadway and in London's West End, she performed in nightclubs, such as the Blue Angel in Manhattan, early television (Androcles and the Lion on Omnibus), and in regional theatre.