We’re thinking of her pre-soap career here, of course. The Joan who played an assortment of cockney teenage tarts in various downmarket ‘social problem’ shockers. The Joan who simultaneously balanced a giant wig on her head and struggled to hold a large emerald in her navel in land of the Pharaohs. The Joan who played herself, breaking up with hubby Anthony Newley, in hubby Anthony Newley’s self-indulgent biopic, while they were breaking up for real. The Joan who would fight a papier mache ant or a papier mache walking tree in the name of horror. There’s so much more than the quarterback-shouldered image of today.
FINEST HOUR: The elusive object of Tom Bell’s desire in two parallel incarnations in Quest for Love.
