Joan Davis was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 comedic

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 actress whose career spanned vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

, film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

, radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 and television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

. Remembered best for the 1950s television comedy, I Married Joan

I Married Joan

I Married Joan is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from 1952 to 1955. It starred veteran vaudeville, film, and radio comedienne Joan Davis as the manic wife of a mild-mannered community judge, Bradley Stevens .-Synopsis:...

, Davis had a successful earlier career as a B-movie

B-movie

A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....

 actress and a leading star of 1940s radio comedy.

Born as Madonna Josephine Davis in Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul, Minnesota

Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U.S. state of Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the state's largest city...

, Davis was a performer since childhood. She appeared with her husband Si Wills in vaudeville.
Davis' first film was a short subject for Educational Pictures

Educational Pictures

Educational Pictures was a film distribution company founded in 1919 by Earle Hammons . Educational primarily distributed short subjects, and today is probably best known for its series of 1930s comedies starring Buster Keaton, as well as for a series of one-reel comedies featuring Shirley...

 called Way Up Thar (1935), featuring a then-unknown Roy Rogers

Roy Rogers

Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...

.