Joyce Jameson was an American actress, known for many television roles, including recurring guest appearances as Skippy, one of the "fun girls" in the 1960s television seriesThe Andy Griffith Show as well as "the Blonde" in the Academy Award-winning The Apartment.
Jameson began work in the early 1950s with numerous uncredited roles in films and television. She made her film debut in 1951 playing a chorus girl dancer in the motion picture Show Boat. Other notable film credits of that early period included Problem Girls, Tip on a Dead Jockey and The Apartment . In 1962, she starred with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre in the Roger Corman horror film Tales of Terror as Annabel Herringbone. She played Lorre's vulgar, unfaithful wife, and during the course of the film, she and her paramour were locked up in Lorre's wine cellar. One year later, she again starred with Lorre and Price in the raucous comedy The Comedy of Terrors. In 1964, she appeared as a hotel hooker in the comedy Good Neighbor Sam, starring Jack Lemmon and Romy Schneider. In 1966, she starred as Abigail in the Elvis Presley film Frankie and Johnny and in Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! with Bob Hope and Elke Sommer. She also appeared in 1968's The Split, a crime film with Jim Brown and Warren Oates, and in an unsold comedy pilot for CBS titled The Mouse That Roared. Jameson had roles in Death Race 2000 playing Grace Pander, The Outlaw Josey Wales as Rose, Every Which Way but Loose, and Hardbodies.
Television
Jameson was also a television actress. She was a regular member of the cast on Club Oasis. She made two appearances on Perry Mason: first as Lorraine Iverson who killed her husband in the 1963 episode "The Case of the Floating Stones", then as Dolly Jameson in the 1965 episode, "The Case of the Feather Cloak". She also had roles on The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gunsmoke, Stagecoach West, The Twilight Zone, The Man from U.N.C.L.E, McHale's Navy, My Favorite Martian, The Munsters, F-Troop, Hogan's Heroes, Alias Smith and Jones, Emergency! and Barney Miller. She appeared in The Rockford Files. Later she appeared in Charlie's Angels, The Feather and Father Gang, and The Love Boat. Her ongoing role as Skippy paired with Daphne in The Andy Griffith Show established The Fun Girls. Jameson provided one of the voices for the cartoon series Jokebook. Jameson also was co-host of Tempo III, a program on KHJ-TV in Los Angeles.
Personal life
She married actor/songwriter Billy Barnes in the 1950s, and they had one child together, son Tyler, before their divorce. Subsequently, Jameson was a longtime girlfriend of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. star Robert Vaughn. She acted opposite Vaughn as the guest star on a 1966 U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Dippy Blond Affair". According to Vaughn's autobiography, A Fortunate Life, Jameson suffered from depression. She was also an insomniac and regularly took Miltown to help her sleep.
Death
On January 16, 1987, Jameson committed suicide by overdosing on pills at the age of 54. Her body was cremated and her ashes scattered at sea.
