Joan Winmill Brown
Actress who turned to God after a romance with Bobby Kennedy
JOAN WINMILL BROWN, who has died aged 89, was an actress who became the secret girlfriend of Bobby Kennedy – until his father put an end to the relationship; but after going to see Dr Billy Graham when he toured Britain in 1954 she was befriended and mentored by Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell, and went on to become a key figure in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
In 1948 Joan Winmill was a rising star of the British stage and screen when she was introduced to Kennedy backstage at the Vaudeville Theatre. Beguiled by the strikingly handsome blonde young actress, Kennedy, who was in London visiting his friend, the playwright William Douglas-home, took her to dinner at J Sheekey’s.
The resulting affair lasted for the summers of 1948 and 1949, during which time Kennedy installed her in a flat in Kensington. But when his parents, Joe and Rose Kennedy, found out about the relationship, they ordered their son to end it. Their break-up in early 1950 hit Joan Winmill hard; she sank into depression and spent several years in a haze of drink and pills. In June 1950 Bobby Kennedy married Ethel Skakel.
“At the time my world fell apart but in hindsight I don’t believe I truly loved him,” Joan Winmill Brown said in 1976. “I think I was infatuated with his aura of wealth as much as the man himself.” At one stage she even considered suicide.
But in 1954 a friend “dragged” her to see the Billy Graham Crusade. “I walked into Harringay Arena, the crowds singing Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine. I didn’t get it at all,” she recalled. That night, however, she was introduced to Ruth Bell and their lifelong friendship helped to turn Joan Winmill’s life around.
Later that year Joan Winmill travelled to America to star in Souls in Conflict, a film funded by Graham in which she played an actress who faces up to her problems after attending one of Billy Graham’s rallies. “It was art imitating my real life,” she said. “God in Jesus showed me the way to happiness”.
Joan Winmill was born in London on December 21 1927. Her mother died when Joan was still a child and she sought solace in trips to the cinema with her grandmother. After the war she appeared in amateur productions, before winning the role of Eva Braun in a West End play. This led to a role in the long-running West End hit, The Chiltern Players (1948).
In 1951, still raw from her break-up with Kennedy, she auditioned to play the lead, Lucy, for a touring production of Dracula. Despite continually fluffing her lines, she was cast as Wells, the maid. Her other credits included the film noir White Corridors (1951), and the comedy caper Innocents in Paris (1953).
In 1953 she played Mary Skelton in the BBC miniseries Epitaph for a Spy, with Peter Cushing as an innocent photographer wrongly arrested for espionage in Paris. She was then cast as the lead opposite Guy Middleton in the comedy thriller The Harassed Hero (1954). While working on Souls
in Conflict Joan Winmill met William “Bill” Brown, who would go on to become a producer for Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures. Hired in 1952 to distribute “the Lord’s word” via Graham’s films in churches across America, Brown was asked to double as Winmill’s driver during the publicity tour of Souls in Conflict. He proposed to her by the roadside on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Throughout the 1960s, the couple devoted themselves to working for church groups and other organisations. Joan Winmill Brown also published several novels including Heaven in a Wild Flower and Lady of Penross Manor.
In retirement the Browns settled in Maui, Hawaii.
Bill Brown died earlier this year. Their two children survive her.
Joan Winmill Brown, born December 21 1927, died June 29 2017