Joy Harmon’s Cause of Death Revealed After Passing

Harmon moved away from her Hollywood career to focus on raising the three children she shared with her ex-husband, Jeff Gourson.

'She was a wonderful person, who always loved baking,' Gourson said of Harmon in a statement to People. 'Even back when she was acting, she'd bake cookies and bring them to set, and later she opened her bakery and went to it every single day. She loved that place. Also loved animals.'

He shared how his ex-wife had 'lived above Burbank in Shadow Hills and there were all these peacocks that would come around, the chickens, the squirrels, the peacocks would come right up to her because she'd feed them.'

'So she loved people, she loved animals, and she loved baking,' Gourson said. 'We'll miss her dearly. We miss her already.'

She is survived by her three children and nine grandchildren.

Born Patricia Joy Harmon in Queens, she became a newsreel model at the age of three before her family moved to Connecticut.

As a teenager, she was a finalist in the Miss Connecticut pageant before she began her stage career at a local playhouse in Bridgeport, kick-starting the process that led to her Broadway debut in Make A Million, a 1958 comedy about a quiz show.

Groucho Marx saw her in the production and was so taken with her that he brought her onto his real-life quiz show, You Bet Your Life, which launched her career in Hollywood.

He made her the announcer on his later quiz show, Tell It To Groucho, and often flirted with her at work, she recalled fondly on the podcast Vanguard of Hollywood.

'He had the reputation of being flirty with women. He was very flirty with me when we were on set. But that wasn't like him at all, because then he would be questioning me: "Where did you go last night? What were you doing? No, you don't do that." He was just like a dad to me, but I loved him very much and I went a lot to his house,' she said.

In the 1960s, she had roles on multiple beloved TV series of the era, including The Beverly Hillbillies, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., That Girl and Burke's Law.

However, her best-remembered role was in Cool Hand Luke as a blonde bombshell called Lucille, who suggestively washes a car and prances around for the benefit of an increasingly overheated group of inmates doing prison labor nearby.

The three-minute scene instantly made her an enduring pinup of the 1960s, and the scene was a harbinger of the more open sexuality of the emerging New Hollywood.

When Harmon auditioned for the part, the movie's leading man, Paul Newman, was struck by her looks, marveling: 'Gosh, you have the bluest eyes.'

Ahead of the filming of the car wash scene, the male cast playing the inmates – including Newman, George Kennedy, JD Cannon, Strother Martin and Jo Van Vleet – were forbidden to bring their wives or girlfriends on set.

'They wanted the guys not to be around women for a long time,' Harmon explained. 'So they couldn't talk to me – the cast, you know. They just kept them separate, 'cause they wanted their reaction I guess.'

Through the last years of her life, Harmon continued to receive fan mail praising the car wash scene, with customers at her bakery asking her to sign stills from Cool Hand Luke. 

She married film editor and TV producer Jeff Gourson in 1968 and continued appearing on such programs as The Monkees and Love, American Style.

After a final guest appearance on an episode of the short-lived 1973 sitcom Thicker Than Water, starring Julie Harris, she withdrew from acting to focus on raising her children, and then found her second act with her shop Aunt Joy's Cakes in Burbank.