Joan Leslie Early Hollywood career What is an example of one of Joan's early roles? Camille What year did she play the role of Camille? a romantic drama starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor. She played Taylor's younger sister Marie Jeanette, Did she have trouble getting roles? I don't know.
Who was her agent during this time?
Who was Joan Leslie's agent during the Camille role?
In 1936, Leslie caught the attention of a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) when the three Brodel sisters were performing in New York. She was given a six-month contract with the studio, earning $200 per week. While working at the studio, she attended MGM's Little Red Schoolhouse with other child actors like Mickey Rooney and Freddie Bartholomew.  Her first film role was in Camille (1936), a romantic drama starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor. She played Taylor's younger sister Marie Jeanette, but her speaking scenes were deleted and she was uncredited. MGM had trouble finding suitable roles for her, and she was let go by the studio along with Deanna Durbin. Leslie returned to New York, working on the radio and as a model. During this time, her older sister Mary was signed to Universal Studios. Leslie returned to Hollywood with the rest of her family, working for different studios as a freelancer. She mainly worked for RKO Pictures.  Leslie was selected to play a small role in Men with Wings (1938). While shooting the film, director William A. Wellman discovered that Leslie's mother had lied about her daughter's age and that she was only thirteen years old. For the remainder of the filming schedule, Wellman replaced her with Mary.  Leslie gained her first credited role in Winter Carnival (1939) as Betsy Phillips. She was chosen for the part because the director was searching for an actress with a southern accent. She was billed as Joan Brodel. Later that year, she co-starred with Jimmy Lydon in Two Thoroughbreds, in which she played the daughter of a horse owner.  At age 15, Leslie was selected by a group of Hollywood directors as one of 13 "baby stars of 1940." CANNOTANSWER
In 1936, Leslie caught the attention of a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Joan Leslie (born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel; January 26, 1925 – October 12, 2015) was an American actress and vaudevillian, who during the Hollywood Golden Age, appeared in such films as High Sierra, Sergeant York, and Yankee Doodle Dandy.

Early life
Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel was born on January 26, 1925, in Highland Park, Michigan, the youngest child of John and Agnes Brodel. John was a bank clerk and Agnes was a pianist.

Joan's two older sisters, Betty (born 1919) and Mary Brodel (1916–2015), shared their mother's musical interest and started to learn how to play instruments, such as the saxophone and the banjo, at an early age. They began performing in front of audiences in acts that included singing and dancing. Leslie joined the duo at two and a half years of age. She was soon able to play the accordion.

With her father losing his job in the mid-1930s, the Great Depression caused financial difficulties for the family. As a result, the three sisters entered show business as vaudeville performers to support the family. They began touring in Canada and the United States. Collectively, they were known as The Three Brodels. As an attempt to bypass child labor laws at the time, both Mary and Joan pretended to be older than they were. When Leslie was nine, she told child labor investigators that she was 16 years old. Joan proved to be the scene stealer of the three sisters because of her impersonations of figures such as Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, and Jimmy Durante. Coming from a family of Irish ancestry, Leslie was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools in Detroit, Toronto, and Montreal.

Early Hollywood career
In 1936, 11-year-old Leslie caught the attention of a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) when the three Brodel sisters were performing in New York. She was given a six-month contract with the studio, earning $200 per week. While working at the studio, she attended MGM's Little Red Schoolhouse with other child actors such as Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, and Freddie Bartholomew.

Her first film role was in Camille (1936), a romantic drama starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor. She played Taylor's younger sister Marie Jeanette, but her speaking scenes were deleted and she was uncredited. MGM had trouble finding suitable roles for her, and she was let go by the studio along with Deanna Durbin. Leslie returned to New York, working on the radio and as a model. During this time, her older sister Mary was signed to Universal Studios. Leslie returned to Hollywood with the rest of her family, working for different studios as a freelancer. She mainly worked for RKO Pictures.

Leslie was selected to play a small role in Men with Wings (1938). While shooting the film, director William A. Wellman discovered that Leslie's mother had lied about her daughter's age and that she was only 13 years old. For the remainder of the filming schedule, Wellman replaced her with Mary.

Leslie gained her first credited role in Winter Carnival (1939) as Betsy Phillips. She was chosen for the part because the director was searching for an actress with a southern accent. She was billed as Joan Brodel. Later that year, she co-starred with Jimmy Lydon in Two Thoroughbreds, in which she played the daughter of a horse owner.

At age 15, Leslie was selected by a group of Hollywood directors as one of 13 "baby stars of 1940." That same year, she appeared in the Warner Bros. film short, Alice in Movieland, about a starlet trying to make her mark in Hollywood. One of the first films directed by Jean Negulesco in Hollywood, it was based on a story by Ed Sullivan.

Success at Warner Bros.

Her big break came when she signed a contract with Warner Bros. in 1941. At the time, actress Joan Blondell's name was considered too similar, so Brodel's acting name was changed to Joan Leslie.

Two weeks later, the then-15-year-old actress was asked to do a screen test while unaware which movie it was for. She got the part because she could cry on cue. The movie was High Sierra (1941), starring Ida Lupino and Humphrey Bogart. Leslie played the crippled girl, Velma. Film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "a newcomer named Joan Leslie handles lesser roles effectively."

Later that year, Warner Bros. produced a biopic of Alvin C. York, a decorated American World War I soldier, Sergeant York (also 1941), starring Gary Cooper. Jane Russell was initially suggested for the role of Gracie Williams, York's fiancée, but York wanted an actress who neither smoked nor drank. 16-year old Leslie eventually got the part. Sergeant York was a critical and financial success, becoming the highest-grossing movie of 1941. It received 11 Oscar nominations and Cooper won the Best Actor award.

Cooper (aged 40) was 24 years her senior. "Gary gave me a doll on the set," Leslie later told the Toronto Star. "That's how he saw me."

Leslie had a supporting role in The Male Animal (1942). She played Olivia de Havilland's younger sister, Patricia Stanley, a role Gene Tierney had played in the original Broadway production.

She auditioned for Paramount's Holiday Inn (1942), but Warner Bros. decided to cast her in Yankee Doodle Dandy (also 1942) with James Cagney. The film is a musical depicting the life of Broadway entertainer George M. Cohan. Leslie portrayed his girlfriend/wife Mary, an aspiring singer. The film received eight Oscar nominations, including a Best Actor award for James Cagney. By now, Leslie had become a star whose on-screen image was described as "sweet innocence without seeming too sugary."

Leslie was in four motion pictures released during 1943. The first was The Hard Way, starring Ida Lupino and Dennis Morgan. A New York Times reviewer described Leslie as "just as deft and versatile a lady as the character she is supposed to be." For the second, she was lent to RKO for The Sky's the Limit, starring with Fred Astaire. Leslie's character introduced the Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer song "My Shining Hour". In the third movie, Leslie co-starred in the wartime motion picture This Is the Army  with Ronald Reagan. The fourth movie was Thank Your Lucky Stars.

She was considered for the role of Tessa in The Constant Nymph (also 1943), wherein she would play opposite Errol Flynn. Studio executive Jack L. Warner, though, felt she was unsuitable and the part went to Joan Fontaine. The Australian-born actor Flynn was rejected because the director wanted a British actor.

During World War II, she was a regular volunteer at the Hollywood Canteen, where she danced with servicemen and signed hundreds of autographs. She was featured with Robert Hutton, among many others, in the Warner Bros. film Hollywood Canteen (1944). Like most of the other Hollywood stars appearing in the film, she played herself, but the fictionalized plot had her falling in love with a soldier (played by Hutton) frequenting the canteen. Her sister, actress Betty Brodel, briefly played herself in the film as well. In 1946, an exhibitors' poll conducted by Motion Picture Herald voted Leslie the most promising star of tomorrow.

Later career
By 1946, Leslie was growing increasingly dissatisfied with the roles offered to her by the studio. She sought more serious and mature roles, and wanted to break out of her ingenue image, which was partly due to her young age. Her decision was also based on moral and religious grounds. With the help of her lawyer Oscar Cummings, she took Warner Bros. to court to get released from her contract.

In 1947, the Catholic Theater Guild gave Leslie an award because of her "consistent refusal to use her talents and art in film productions of objectionable character."

As a result of this, Jack Warner used his influence to blacklist her from other major Hollywood studios. In 1947, she signed a two-picture contract with the poverty row studio Eagle-Lion Films. The first one was Repeat Performance (1947), a film noir in which she played a Broadway actress. The other was Northwest Stampede (1948) in which she performed with James Craig.

After her contract with Eagle-Lion Films expired, she was cast in The Skipper Surprised His Wife (1950), appearing with Robert Walker. The film was distributed by MGM, the studio with which she began her film career in 1936.

In the early 1950s, Leslie chose to focus on raising her daughters, which resulted in a more irregular film career. In 1952, she signed a short-term deal with Republic Pictures, the low-budget studio that primarily produced Westerns. One of the films she made for Republic was Flight Nurse (1953). Leslie's character, Polly Davis, was based on the successful flight nurse Lillian Kinkella Keil's career in the Air Force. It was described by the newspaper Kingsport Times-News as a thrilling film that "honors the courageous women who performed miracles of mercy above the clouds in evacuation of wounded GIs from Korean battlefields." Her last film was The Revolt of Mamie Stover (1956), but she continued making sporadic appearances in television shows while her children were at school. She retired from acting in 1991, after appearing in the TV film Fire in the Dark.

Personal life
In March 1950, she married William Caldwell, an obstetrician. Their identical twin daughters, Patrice and Ellen, were born on January 7, 1951. Both daughters eventually became teachers.

Leslie was a Democrat who supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson during the 1952 presidential election.

Leslie was in the business of designing clothes, with her own eponymous brand. William died in 2000. A year later, she founded the Dr. William G. and Joan L. Caldwell Chair in Gynecologic Oncology for the University of Louisville. Leslie was an adopted alumna of the university for over 32 years.
A devout Catholic, she was involved with charity work for the St. Anne's Maternity Home for more than 50 years.

Death
Leslie died on October 12, 2015, in Los Angeles, California. She was 90.

Awards and honors
On October 8, 1960, Joan Leslie received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street.
In 1999, she was one of the 250 actresses nominated for the American Film Institute's selection of the 25 greatest female screen legends to have debuted before 1950. 
On August 12, 2006, she received a Golden Boot Award for her contributions to Western television shows and movies.

Complete filmography
For TV movies, see the following section.

Television

Radio appearances

References

External links

 
 
 
 Joan Leslie at the American Film Institute

1925 births
2015 deaths
20th-century American actresses
Actresses from Detroit
American Roman Catholics
American child actresses
American film actresses
American television actresses
Articles containing video clips
Burials at Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City
California Democrats
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract players
Michigan Democrats
Vaudeville performers
Warner Bros. contract players
21st-century American women
Agent 355 (died after 1780) was the code name of a female spy during the American Revolution, part of the Culper Ring. Agent 355 was one of the first spies for the United States, but her real identity is unknown. The number 355 could be decrypted from the system the Culper Ring used to mean "lady."

Biography
The only direct reference to Agent 355 in any of the Culper Ring's missives (1778–1780) appears in a letter from Abraham Woodhull ("Samuel Culper Sr.") to General George Washington, where Woodhull describes her as "one who hath been ever serviceable to this correspondence."

The true identity of Agent 355 remains unknown, but some facts about her seem clear. She worked with the American Patriots during the Revolutionary War as a spy, and was likely recruited by Woodhull into the spy ring. The way the code is constructed indicates that she may have had "some degree of social prominence." She was likely living in New York City at the time, and at some point had contact with Major John André and Benedict Arnold. One person who has been named as the possible identity of Agent 355 was Anna Strong, Woodhull's neighbor. Strong allegedly helped the Culper Ring by signaling to its members the location of Caleb Brewster, who raided British shipments in his whaleboat around Long Island Sound after he was given a secure location by Strong.

Another theory is that Agent 355 may have been Robert Townsend's common-law wife. Stories about Townsend state that he was in love with Agent 355. John Burke and Andrea Meyer have made a different case for 355's involvement in the spy ring, using circumstantial evidence that she may have been close to Major John André and also to Benjamin Tallmadge, thereby protecting Woodhull from accusations of being a spy. Other possible candidates for 355 include Sarah Horton Townsend and Elizabeth Burgin.

It is also occasionally believed that there was no Agent 355 at all, but rather that the code indicated a woman who had useful information but was not "formally connected to the ring." The code itself may have referred to "a woman," not an agent who was a woman.

Agent 355 is thought to have played a major role in exposing Arnold as a defector and in the arrest of André, who was hanged in Tappan, New York. She may have been a member of a prominent Loyalist family, which would have put her within easy reach of British commanders.

Agent 355 was arrested in 1780 when Benedict Arnold defected to the Loyalists. She was imprisoned on , a prison ship, where she may have given birth to a boy named Robert Townsend Jr. She later died on the prison ship. However, Alexander Rose disagrees with this narrative, stating that "females were not kept aboard prison ships," and that "there's no record whatsoever of a birth." Strengthening the idea that Agent 355 may have been Anna Strong is the fact that Anna's husband, Selah Strong, was imprisoned on Jersey and she was supposedly allowed to bring him food. Her presence on the ship may have led to the legend that Agent 355 was herself imprisoned there.

In popular culture

Agent 355 has become a part of popular fiction.

One of the main characters in Y: The Last Man from Vertigo Comics is a modern spy that goes by Agent 355. She is part of a fictionalized Culper Ring that has remained active into modern times.
Idara Victor plays fictional Agent 355 in the television series Turn: Washington's Spies.  In the show, Agent 355 is the code name of a former slave named Abigail.  She had been owned by Anna Strong until the British army seized Selah's property upon his imprisonment. Though technically free, she is coerced into working for John André. Abigail collects information overheard in André's home and hides it in gifts sent to her son, left in Anna's care.
In Season 4, Episode 6 (Identity Crisis) of the US TV show White Collar, the show's main characters investigate a Culper conspiracy theory based on letters owned by a descendant of 355.
Rebel Spy by Veronica Rossi, a young adult novel reimagining the story behind Agent 355, was published in 2020.
The 355 is a female-led spy film released by Universal Pictures on January 7, 2022.  A group of women from different international spy agencies create a faction code-named 355 in honor of Agent 355.

See also
Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War

Footnotes

Citations

Sources 
 
 
 

1780s deaths
Female wartime spies
Women in the American Revolution
Year of birth unknown
Unidentified people
American spies during the American Revolution The President's Mistress is a 1978 American made-for-television drama mystery film produced by Kings Road Entertainment and starring Beau Bridges, Karen Grassle, Susan Blanchard and Larry Hagman.

Plot
Donna Morton has been having an affair with the President of the United States for several months, regularly meeting with him for assignations in a safe house in Washington, D.C. She is always picked up in a car by a Secret Service agent.

In Moscow, an agent in the Kremlin manages to get hold of a secret document identifying Donna Morton as a KGB agent sent to spy on the president. This document is passed back to Washington, where it comes into the possession of the CSA (a thinly disguised version of the CIA). They begin to put Donna Morton under surveillance.

The same day, her brother Ben Morton – a Washington businessman and occasional courier for the CSA – arrived back in the city. On the plane he meets and romances Mugsy Evans. When Donna Morton suddenly turns up dead in her apartment moments before she was due to be picked up by her Secret Service driver, he begins to investigate.

He discovers her affair with the president, and through his contacts with the Secret Service, he discovers a CSA agent was seen leaving her apartment building around the time of his death. The Secret Service agent who regularly drove Donna, informs him that the CSA were there, but before any more information can be passed on, she is killed.

Realising now that the CSA had played a large role in her death, Ben Morton confronts the head of the CSA, who tells him it was the Soviets who killed her, and that she was a Soviet agent. He explains that the man who probably performed the deed was the head KGB agent in Washington, Anatoly.

Anatoly is the Soviet Naval Attaché who he interrogates at gunpoint in the car. He tells him everything he knows – that the classified document identifying Donna Morton as a Soviet agent was a fake, designed to throw the CSA off balance, which had always been intended to fall into American hands. The KGB had thus hoped to destabilise the White House during crucial talks with China.

 Beau Bridges - Ben Morton
 Karen Grassle - Donna Morton
 Larry Hagman - Ed Murphy
 Joel Fabiani - Jim Gilkrest
 Susan Blanchard - Margaret 'Mugsy' Evans

References

1978 television films
1978 films
1970s mystery drama films
American mystery drama films
American films
American television films
English-language films
Films set in Washington, D.C.
Films scored by Lalo Schifrin
Films directed by John Llewellyn Moxey