9. Joyce Jameson
Sometimes, being beautiful really
is a curse, and not the kind of humblebragging that goes on with the "don't hate me because I'm beautiful" crowd. Case in point, Joyce Jameson. A graduate from UCLA (in theater arts, but we'll forgive her that), Jameson was intelligent, sensitive, and well-read. She is perhaps best-known for her role as "fun girl" Skippy on the Andy Griffith Show, but Jameson's acting resume is a mile long: The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, Hogan's Heroes, The Munsters...if it aired during the sixties, she was probably in it. Jameson also appeared on the big screen in The Apartment (credited as "The Blonde") as well as a generous sprinkling of Roger Corman vehicles, including Tales of Terror and Death Race 2000. As you can imagine from such a diverse list, Jameson had range to spare. However, she was at her most brilliant in comedy. Jameson's ear for dialect and mimicry was uncanny. She could do a spot-on Judy Garland, Grace Kelly, or Marlene Dietrich. With such gifts, she clearly had all the potential to make a name for herself as a comedienne. So what went wrong? Imagine having all of that talent, but having your career options be limited to endless iterations of the Ditzy Blonde trope. The busty, blonde Jameson found the roles available to her to be little more than attractive window dressing. It was a limitation that she observed not entirely without bitterness:
"Everyone expects to cast me as the dumb or victimized blonde. After they interview me, I can just hear them say, 'Hey! She's intelligent, but what do you do with it?'"
To make matters worse, she suffered from lifelong bouts with depression and insomnia, ailments most often treated with pills that can really f**k your s**t up. At the age of 54, she overdosed on sleeping pills, and thus was cut short the life of one of the funniest actresses never known.