Background
Joan Hume McCracken was born on December 31, 1917 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Frank McCracken, a sports reporter for the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, and of Mary Humes.
Joan Hume McCracken was born on December 31, 1917 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was the daughter of Frank McCracken, a sports reporter for the Philadelphia Evening Ledger, and of Mary Humes.
Joan was educated at the Harrity School and West Philadelphia High School. When she was ten, her aunt offered to pay for her lessons at the Littlefield Ballet School. The director, Catherine Littlefield, invited McCracken to join the junior group of her company.
During her teen-age years, which she spent with Littlefield's company, McCracken appeared at the Robin Hood Dell and with the Chicago Civic Opera. In 1937, under the auspices of the International Exposition, she toured Europe with the Littlefield company. She came to regard it as "the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. " McCracken first danced in New York as principal ballerina in the corps de ballet of the Radio City Music Hall. In 1942, at the National Theatre, she became a member of Eugene Loring's newly formed Dance Players. That year the New York Times dance critic, John Martin, cited her for "her outstanding ability, her comedy playing, and the style and authority of her dancing. " The next season, dancing in Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! , McCracken converted her chorus role into a success by effortlessly repeating a fall during the "Many a New Day" number. Among the perquisites of her overnight celebrity was billing in the program as "The Girl Who Falls Down. " Shortly afterward Oscar Hammerstein suggested that McCracken prepare for greater opportunities by studying acting. She enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse, and a Hollywood screen test brought her a contract to appear in Warner Brothers' Hollywood Canteen (1944). Later that year she had the major role of an impish parlor maid in the Theatre Guild's Bloomer Girl.
In 1947, McCracken joined the Experimental Theatre's production of Charles Laughton's translation of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht. She portrayed the daughter who loses her suitor because of the heretical teachings of her father (played by Charles Laughton). Critical response was enthusiastic. Her 1947 dramatic success was shown not to be a fluke in 1949, when she appeared in Clifford Odets' The Big Knife, starring John Garfield. As in Galileo, she portrayed a luckless and desperate young woman bullied by the "system. " Although the play received mixed reviews, McCracken was cited as "extraordinarily good" and as providing "an inventive performance of quality. " Her career in Hollywood culminated with the 1947 Betty Comden-Adolph Green screen adaptation of the musical Good News, in which she costarred with June Allyson. McCracken next turned to television, appearing in such dramatic works as the Theatre Guild's presentation of George Bernard Shaw's Great Catherine, with Gertrude Lawrence (1948). She also played the dancing niece in the "Pulitzer Prize Playhouse" production of You Can't Take It with You. In 1952 she had her own television series, "Claudia, " based on the heroine of Rose Franken's popular short stories about the domestic problems of young newlyweds. The revue Dance Me a Song, according to some, managed to submerge McCracken's "glowing talents. "
McCracken's comparatively brief career was characterized by a rare versatility. Although she was never a star of the first rank, her success may be attributed to the gumption and resiliency beneath her gamin like charm.
In 1941, McCracken married Jack Dunphy, an aspiring writer and fellow dancer; they then left the Philadelphia Ballet and hitchhiked to New York with $35 between them. After a divorce from Jack Dunphy in 1951, on January 6, 1953, she married Bob Fosse, another member of the cast of Dance Me a Song. They were divorced ten years later.