Born December 29, 1915 in Oakland, California, Catherine Josephine Van Fleet, known professionally as Jo Van Fleet, was the daughter of a railroad worker and his wife. Her father died in 1919, after which Jo, her older sister, and her mother moved in with her mother’s parents.
The budding actress was attracted to the stage while attending the University of California at Berkeley from which she graduated in 1936, after which she taught high school in Morro Bay for several years. She then moved to New York where further studied acting under Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Van Fleet began her stage career at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C. in a 1944 production of Uncle Harry. Two years later, she was on Broadway in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. That same year, she married William G. Bales, whose career in modern dance included work as a performer, choreographer, professor at Bennington College, and founding Dean of Dance at the State University of New York at Purchase, N. Y. The couple had one child and remained together until his death in 1990.
Despite her success on stage, Van Fleet had been taking additional lessons with Elia Kazan at the Actors Studio from 1950 on. In 1950, she starred opposite Louis Calhern in an acclaimed Broadway production of King Lear. She was in Kazan’s Flight Into Egypt in 1952 and Camino Real in 1953. The following year, she won a Tony for Best Featured Actress for her performance in 1954’s The Trip to Bountiful in support of Lillian Gish and Eva Marie Saint.
At Kazan’s urging, Van Fleet went to Hollywood where he cast her as James Dean’s mother in 1955’s East of Eden for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. That same year, she had featured roles in The Rose Tattoo, for which Anna Magnani won the Best Actress Oscar; and I’ll Cry Tomorrow, for which Susan Hayward was also nominated for Best Actress.
Later in the decade, Van Fleet gave commanding performances in such films as The King and Four Queens, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and This Angry Age. She was nominated for a Best Actress Tony for 1958’s Look Homeward Angel.
At 44, Van fleet spent five hours in the makeup chair each morning in order to play the 89-year-old matriarch in Kazan’s 1960 film, Wild River. It was her best film role in years.
Sadly, Van fleet’s screen career never really took off and she spent most of the 1960s in TV roles, most notably as the wicked stepmother in the 1965 version of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella with Lesley Ann Warren, Stuart Damon, and Celeste Holm. She did have two memorable screen roles toward the end of the decade in Cool Hand Luke and I Love You, Alice B, Toklas!
The actress made just three more theatrical films, years apart. In 1971, she was Big Momma in James Goldstone’s The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Stright. In 1976, she was in Roman Polanski’s The Tenant. In 1986, she was in Fielder Cook’s Seize the Day.
Jo Van Fleet died in 1996 at 80.
ESSENTIAL FILMS
EAST OF EDEN (1955), directed by Elia Kazan
Set in 1917 Monterey, James Dean and Richard Davolos are twin teenage brothers who have grown up with their stern bible touting father, Raymond Massey, knowing nothing about their long-lost mother, Van Fleet in her Oscar-winning portrayal of the character who turns out to be the madam of a brothel in the next town. Based on John Steinbeck’s monumental bestseller, the film eschews the earlier part of the novel in which Massey and Van Fleet’s characters meet. Julie Harris is the girl who comes between the boys, Burl Ives is the town sheriff, and Lois Smith, also making her film debut, is the bookkeeper in Van Fleet’s establishment.
I’LL CRY TOMORROW (1955), directed by Daniel Mann
Van Fleet had another juicy part as an unconventional mother, that of singer-actress Lillian Roth, played to the hilt by Susan Hayward in an Oscar-nominated performance. Hayward, who famously played singer Jane Froman in With a Song in My Heart three years earlier in which she was dubbed by Froman, got to provide her own vocals this time around to the consternation of Roth who was not asked to do the same this time around. Although the film faithfully portrayals Roth’s struggles with alcohol, it pulls its punches by introducing Eddie Albert as the man who becomes her third husband. He was her sixth.
GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL (1957). directed by John Sturges
One of the better films about the thirty-second gunfight involving Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, this one starred Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in the roles played by Henry Fonda and Victor Mature in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine eleven years earlier. Rhonda Fleming played Lancaster’s lady while Van Fleet played Douglas’ abused mistress. This was the third film in three years, following East of Eden and I’ll Cry Tomorrow, in which Van Fleet’s character was named Kate. Ever the method actress, she asked Douglas to punch her in the face to get into the part. He did just as she asked.
WILD RIVER (1960), directed by Elia Kazan
Both director Kazan and co-star Lee Remick considered this their favorite film of all those they made. Montgomery Clift starred as a Tennessee Valley Authority bureaucrat who comes to the river to do what none of his predecessors have been able to do – evict a stubborn octogenarian from her island before the rising waters engulf her. Van Fleet was the feisty old lady. Remick was her granddaughter. It took five hours every day to apply 44-year-old Van Fleet’s makeup as the 89-year-old Ella. Still ever the method actress, she applied liver spots to her hands even though she was told the camera would not photograph them.
COOL HAND LUKE (1967), directed by Stuart Rosenberg
Van Fleet had only one scene as Paul Newman’s dying mother in this classic prison film in the tradition of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Nominated for four Oscars including Best Actor, Supporting Actor (George Kennedy), Adapted Screenplay, and Score, it won only for Kennedy’s portrayal of one of Newman’s fellow prisoners. Unlike Paul Muni in I Am a Fugitive, Newman never escapes for long in this one for which his Oscar nomination was his fourth. The film’s most famous line, “what we’ve got here is… failure to communicate”, spoken by Strother Martin as a vicious warden, has had a life of its own ever since.
JO VAN FLEET AND OSCAR
East of Eden (1955) – Oscar – Best Supporting Actress
