Joy Harmon, forever known for her brief turn in the Paul Newman classic Cool Hand Luke as the young woman who provocatively washes a car with lots of soapy water as overheated prisoners in the chain gang look on, has died. She was 87.
Harmon died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, her family announced.
Blond, blue-eyed and perpetually tanned, Harmon served as Groucho Marx’s assistant on the 1961 CBS game show Tell It to Groucho, then starred as a girl in Hawaii who gets mixed up in a robbery in the beach party movie One Way Wahine (1965).
She also showed up on lots of TV shows, from The Beverly Hillbillies, My Three Sons, Burke’s Law, Gidget and Batman to Bewitched, Occasional Wife, That Girl, The Monkees and The Odd Couple.
In an interview with author Tom Lisanti for his 2007 book, Glamour Girls of Sixties Hollywood, Harmon said her agent told her that she should wear a bikini to her Cool Hand Luke audition for Newman and director Stuart Rosenberg, so she did.
“I remember Paul Newman said to me, ‘Gosh, you have the bluest eyes!’” she recalled. “They just talked to me, and that was it. It was a small part with no lines, but I wanted to work with Newman, so when they offered it to me I accepted.”
In her scene in the 1967 film, Harmon, in a tattered housedress, turns on the portable radio and washes a 1941 DeSoto under a hot sun as if she’s making love to a man. (George Kennedy’s character imagines her name is Lucille.)
“Stuart was very specific and knew exactly what he wanted,” she told Lisanti. “I guess you can tell that by the way the scene comes off — but I didn’t realize it. And I don’t think I even realized it right after I did it. There were a lot of things he made me do a certain way — soaping the windows, holding the hose — that had a two-way meaning. He would tell me to look different ways, and we kept shooting it over and over again. I just figured I was washing the car. I’ve always been naïve and innocent. I was acting and not trying to be sexy.”
She continued: “I never had any inclination that this would be such a memorable role. Except for being in a movie with Paul Newman, I never expected this part to be so notable and get the reaction it did. After seeing it at the premiere, I was a bit embarrassed. Of all the things I’ve done, people know me most from this film.”
Born in New York, Joy Patricia Harmon was a child model and a finalist in a Miss Connecticut pageant, and she made it to Broadway in the 1958-59 comedy Make a Million. In 1960, she was a contestant on the final season of Marx’s You Bet Your Life, leading to her gig on the comedian’s follow-up game show.
As a 30-foot-tall woman, Harmon found Johnny Crawford hanging from her bikini top in Village of the Giants (1965), directed by Bert I. Gordon.
Her big-screen résumé also included Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963), Roustabout (1964), The Loved One (1965), Young Dillinger (1965) and Angel in My Pocket (1969).
After she left acting, she worked at Disney Studios and owned a bakery in Burbank, Aunt Joy’s Cakes, since 2003. “I get fan mail at the house and at the bakery every week and still send back pictures to people,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2017.
Survivors include her children, Jamie, Julie and Jason, and nine grandchildren. She was married to Emmy-nominated producer and film editor Jeff Gourson (Tron, Quantum Leap) from 1968 until their 2001 divorce.
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help with her medical costs.