Joy Wurgaft
Former Our Gang child star who became a popular singer
JOY WURGAFT, who has died aged 90, was a minor child star turned singer who worked for the film mogul and producer
Hal Roach in a series of Our Gang comedy shorts during the early 1930s.
She was not one of the principal stars. During the 1990s, however, when many of the former Our Gang stars had died, Joy Wurgaft took it upon herself to superimpose her head in a photograph on the body of actress Darla Hood, to give the illusion that she was a much bigger player than she actually was. As a guest at film conventions her warmth and charm seemed to smooth over any awkwardnesses, so her creativity was overlooked.
Joy Wurgraft was born on September 19 1927 to Robert and Irene Wurgaft and was only three when she was dispatched to dancing school. Aged five, she won Orange County’s Better Baby Exposition.
Thus convinced of her star potential, her parents dressed her up in her Sunday best, engaged a portrait photographer and headed to Hollywood and the Hal Roach Studios. In May 1934 the six-year-old Joy was given a two-year contract.
Her first role required her to sing I Wanna Go Back to My Little Grass Shack for the Our Gang short, Mike Fright (1934). She was then cast in Babes in Toyland (1935) as one of the children of Mother Peep, the old lady who lives in a shoe, opposite the two biggest stars on the Hal Roach lot, Laurel and Hardy. She and her mother, who drove her to the studios each day, took lunch in the Our Gang café meeting such stars as Charley Chase, Laurel and Hardy and Anita Garvin.
Joy Wurgraft was loaned to RKO for her next two features, Kid Carnival (1935) and Freckles (also 1935), starring Tom Brown and Carol Stone. Back at the Hal Roach Studios, in 1936 she appeared in Our Gang Follies, in which she serenaded Alfalfa with The Object of My Affection. It was her last Our Gang feature.
She then concentrated on getting an education, though she continued to appear in variety shows at the weekends in and around Hollywood.
In 1945, with her classmate Dorothy Morris, she performed on stage in You Can’t Take It With You. Two years later she was discovered by the bandleader Ted Fio Rito, who re-christened her Joy Lane and signed her to tour America and Canada with his orchestra. By 1950 she and the band had their own television show on the KTTV Channel, broadcast live five days a week. She was subsequently given her own show on the station, The Joy Lane Show, which ran for two years.
Around the same time, she was signed to Coral Records and enjoyed a second career on radio, performing on dozens of radio and later television commercials. She established her own nightclub act too, singing in bars and supper clubs in California and Nevada, including the Frontier in Las Vegas, and the Riverside in Reno. In 1957 she joined the cast of Copper and Brass, which opened on Broadway, starring Nancy Walker.
During the 1960s she sang Everything Is Coming Up Roses for Lyndon B Johnson, in a dress made from more than 2,000 fresh rose petals, at a fundraising party held in Los Angeles for Johnson who was running against JF Kennedy for the presidential nomination.
She was rediscovered by fans loyal to the Our Gang comedies in 1995, and subsequently became a fixture at film fan conventions, until multiple sclerosis curtailed her activities. She released her last album under her married name Joy Van Ronkel, The New Venture Collection, in 2013.
She is survived by her husband.
Joy Wurgraft, born September 19 1927, died February 25 2018