Above: Joan Wetmore photographed c1943. Newspapers reported that her hair had been done in this new style at Elizabeth Arden’s New York salon. J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington Special Collections.

The Five Second Version
Joan Wetmore was a busy actor on Broadway and in the early days of live TV in the United States. Born in Sydney Australia, on 29 August 1911 as Joan Deery she moved with her family to New York in 1917. It might be a stretch to describe her as a forgotten Australian, as almost all of her life was lived in the US, where she also had her start on stage. Yet throughout her life she was described as Australian and even after living in the US for twenty five years, she had to go through the process of becoming naturalised. She died in New York in 1989. It was Australian journalist Allan Dawes who described her as a “flashing brunette with (a) charming voice and unidentifiable accent.”

At left: Joan Wetmore in The Daily News (New York) 15 Apr 1941, P75, via Newspapers.com

Theatre in the family

Both Joan’s parents were Australian born. Her mother Agnes “Aggie” Thorn was an acclaimed soubrette for JC Williamson’s Royal Comic Opera Company, very active between 1904 and late 1906. After schooling at Presentation Convent in Melbourne, Aggie studied music at the University of Melbourne and also studied privately with Charlotte Hemming, a well known elocutionist. Aggie appeared in a burst of performances around Australia and New Zealand until she married Arthur Deery and left the stage. Arthur Deery was an up and coming Sydney lawyer whose cases were regular material for newspaper reports. In 1913, the young family lived at what must have been a comfortable home at 92 St George’s Crescent in Drummoyne, a spot that even today has spectacular views of central Sydney across the water.

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Above: Left – Aggie Thorn on a postcard. David Elliott Theatrical Postcard Collection, c 1905. Right – Arthur Deery in The Sunday Sun (Syd) 27 May 1906. Via National Library of Australia’s Trove.

Unfortunately, family life soon became less enjoyable. Following a court case in March 1915, Arthur was struck off as a solicitor and several months later, he boarded the SS Niagara for the US. He settled in New York, soon managing an engineering business. A divorce followed, Aggie claimed he had been unfaithful and had failed to support her. The divorce was granted. For a time, Aggie lived in Melbourne and attempted to start a business, with Joan and her older sister Kathleen attending Presentation Convent as their mother had. And yet, in June 1917, Aggie packed up the girls and left for the US on the SS Makura. The US census return shows that by 1920, the family was living together again, in Manhattan. Aggie and Arthur stayed together for the rest of their lives and were buried side by side at Mount Hope Cemetery in New York’s Westchester county. Whatever their differences, they had successfully reconciled. According to Joan, while in the US Aggie still pursued her passion for singing.

Joan’s US career

Interviewed in late 1944 by Allan Dawes, an Australian journalist based in North America, Joan gave an account of her life in United States that was unusually accurate, and avoided so much of the creative narrative favoured by established actors of the time. After arrival in New York, she had attended the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, and the George Washington High School.

One thing she did not mention to Dawes was that in 1930 she had eloped with William “Bill” Wetmore, whom she had met on an European break. Aggie told some newspapers she did not even know about the impending marriage. Joan was only 19 years old and William, a Harvard hockey and football star, was 23. He was the son of architect Charles Delaven Wetmore, of the well known New York firm Warren & Wetmore. Bill and Joan became a well known society couple in New York, and Joan also developed a reputation as a model. Photos taken of her in 1933 for Vogue magazine by well known photographer Edward Steichen, still circulate today. A son, William, was born of the union in November 1930. But sadly their marriage was reported to have failed by 1936.

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Above: Left – William Wetmore, Oshkosh Northwestern (Wisconsin) 5 April 1930, P15. Right – Joan about the time the couple divorced. New York Daily News, 16 Dec 1939, P309. Via Newspapers.com

In the early 1930s Joan studied under Benno Schneider, a drama teacher who had once been a member of Stanislavski’s Art Theatre in Moscow, and now ran his own school in New York. (In time he was the Columbia Studio drama coach, and his many pupils included Kim Novak, Gene Tierney, Vincent Price and James Garner). In the 1944 interview, Joan did not explain to Allan Dawes exactly what had fed her “stage ambitions”, but her mother’s influence on her life was acknowledged (although Aggie had died in 1932). But the path to the stage had been hard, she admitted to Dawes. “Lots of girls have come to me for advice about a stage career…and I warn them all how deeply you must pay for your ambition and experience.”