Career
Van Patten has appeared in dozens of television series. She was a member of the original cast of the daytime drama As the World Turns. She also played Joyce, the jilted fiancee of Peter Sellers in the cult classic movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas in 1968.
She made her prime-time TV debut as a featured regular on The Danny Kaye Show, after which she co-starred with Bob Denver and Herb Edelman in the 1968-70 sitcom The Good Guys as Claudia Gramus, the long-suffering wife of diner owner Bert Gramus (played by Edelman).
Her guest appearances include Gunsmoke, The Untouchables, The Law and Mr. Jones, Perry Mason, The Twilight Zone, The Jack Benny Program, The Andy Griffith Show, The Outer Limits, Mannix, The Rockford Files, Hawaii Five-O, The Bob Newhart Show, The Odd Couple, Lou Grant, Law & Order, and as an inmate's ignorant sister Sarah Rebadow in the HBO prison series Oz. She also made an appearance as Sally Cato in the 1974 musical film, Mame.
On a 1976 episode of Columbo, "Old Fashioned Murder", Van Patten had a leading role as a museum owner and curator who commits murder - already in the early 1970s she had a minor role in the episode "Negative Reaction" (with Dick Van Dyke) of the same series. In 1979, she appeared opposite Mary Tyler Moore in CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Hour as Iris Chapman, secretary and assistant to Moore's Mary McKinnon character.
In 1995, she played Maureen, Jennie's mother for two seasons on the WB sitcom Unhappily Ever After.
Her last series role to date came as Carol Prudy, Susan Mayer's step-mother on two episodes of the ABC Network comedy/drama Desperate Housewives.
Van Patten has had supporting roles in many films, among them the head of the Little League in the original Bad News Bears.
She also has appeared often on Broadway, in shows including Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, Murder at the Howard Johnson's, Rumors, and Rabbit Hole.
She has usually been astringent in her screen roles. One exception was her recurring role as Maude Pomfritt, the treacly wife of schoolteacher Leander Pomfritt (played by William Schallert), in the TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959–1963).
Van Patten had a supporting role as Rob Schneider's wife in the comedy Grown Ups (2010). The film was directed by her former husband Dennis Dugan.
In 2011, Van Patten starred with Paolo Sorrention in This Must Be the Place.
Read more about this topic: Joyce Van Patten
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