Marilyn Monroe's onetime sister-in-law appeared onstage in 'Detective Story' and 'Pal Joey' and on daytime serials like 'Love of Life' and 'Search for Tomorrow.'
Joan Copeland, the actress and sister of legendary playwright Arthur Miller whose six-decade Broadway career included performances in Detective Story and Pal Joey, has died. She was 99.
Copeland died early Tuesday in her sleep at her Manhattan home on Central Park West, her son, Eric, told The Hollywood Reporter.
One of the first members of The Actors Studio, Copeland worked on several daytime soap operas. She portrayed twins Maggie and Kay on CBS’ Love of Life from 1960-63 and the villainess Andrea Whiting on CBS’ Search for Tomorrow from 1967-72 and appeared on CBS’ The Edge of Night, NBC’s How to Survive a Marriage, CBS’ As the World Turns and ABC’s One Life to Live.
In 1950, Copeland acted on Broadway opposite Ralph Bellamy and Edward Binns in Sidney Kingsley’s Detective Story, and she served as Katharine Hepburn’s standby as Coco Chanel in the musical Coco, which ran for more than 320 performances from 1969-70.
And in a 1976 revival of the Rodgers & Hart musical Pal Joey, she replaced Eleanor Parker in previews to star as Vera Simpson. (Rita Hayworth played the character in the 1957 film adaptation.)
In all, Copeland made it to the Broadway stage 13 times, including in two of Miller’s plays: 1968’s The Price and 1980’s The American Clock, for which she won a Drama Desk Award.
Born Joan Maxine Miller in New York on June 1, 1922, Copeland attended Lincoln High School in Brooklyn, then made her professional acting debut in 1945 as the female lead in a production of Romeo and Juliet at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
“From the time I was a little girl I had the stage bug,” Copeland told The New York Times in 1981. “It was like a big dream, like kids who want to fly to the moon today. Perhaps I was unconsciously influenced by my brother. He had made it. I was desperate to get out of the dreariness I was living in.”
She took Joan Copeland as her stage name — “I didn’t want Miller, for obvious reasons; I did not want to trade on my brother’s name” — and made her Broadway debut in 1948 in Sundown Beach, produced by The Actors Studio, co-founded in 1947 by Elia Kazan.
In The American Clock, Copeland portrayed her mother in a play written by her brother, who had tried to discourage her from show business.
“Arthur didn’t write the part for me, but it’s one of the few roles I didn’t have to audition for my brother,” she said in 2012. “I’ve had to audition for several of his plays, and he always treated me as an actress, not a sister.”
The Pulitzer Prize-winning Miller, born in 1915 and known for such plays as All My Sons, Death of a Salesman and A View From the Bridge, died in 2005 at age 89.
She said she had trouble finding work for a spell because of Miller, who was blacklisted. “At the time, I didn’t know that’s why I wasn’t getting work in television and radio,” she said in 2011. “It was a disastrous happening to culture. Theater was different; it was not affected as drastically.”
Copeland’s other Broadway credits included 1951’s Not for Children, 1963’s Tovarich (she was Vivien Leigh’s standby), 1964’s Something More!, 1970’s Two by Two (she starred opposite Danny Kaye and Madeline Kahn in that), 1976’s Checking Out and 2001’s 45 Seconds From Broadway.
She recurred as Judge Rebecca Stein on NBC’s Law & Order from 1991-2001 and also showed up on episodes of Naked City, The Patty Duke Show, The Defenders, All in the Family, Cagney & Lacey, ER and Chicago Hope.
Her first film was Paddy Chayefsky’s The Goddess (1958), starring Kim Stanley — the movie was said to be based on the life of her onetime sister-in-law Marilyn Monroe — and she also appeared on the big screen in Middle of the Night (1959), Roseland (1977), A Little Sex (1982), Happy New Year (1987), Her Alibi (1989), Jungle 2 Jungle (1997) and The Object of My Affection (1998).
She was married to bacteriologist George Kupchik from 1943 until his death in July 1989. Survivors also include her niece, actress Rebecca Miller.