Joey Heatherton |
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Joey Heatherton (born September 14, 1944) is an American actress, dancer and singer who reached the peak of her popularity in the 1960s and early 1970s.
Born Davenie Johanna, Heatherton is a native of the Long Island village of Rockville Centre, a suburb of New York. While living in Rockville Centre she attended St. Agnes Cathedral School, a Catholic grade and high school. Her father was a Broadway star (Babes In Arms) and television pioneer Ray Heatherton (1909 – 1997).
Heatherton began her career as a child actress and received her first sustained national exposure in 1959 as a semi-regular on The Perry Como Show, playing an exuberant teenager with a perpetual crush on the fiftyish "Mr. C." Another middle-aged crooner who was the object of her on-screen adoration was Dean Martin who invited her to perform numerous times on his popular 1965-74 NBC Thursday night TV variety show, starting with the premiere episode of September 16, 1965. From June to September 1968, along with Frank Sinatra, Jr., she co-hosted Martin's summer substitute musical comedy hour, Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers. She also made multiple appearances on the many other variety shows proliferating 1960s television, such as The Andy Williams Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show and This is Tom Jones. She first appeared on television on her father's show "The Merry Mailman", a popular children's show in New York.