Who is Joey Heatherton

Joey Heatherton was an amazingly entertaining "sex kitten" who had the coolest "shag" hairstyle!

Her father was the vaudevillian and television pioneer Ray Heatherton (1909 - 1997).

She appeared numerous times on The Perry Como Show, Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers, The Andy Williams Show, The Hollywood Palace, The Ed Sullivan Show and This Is Tom Jones.

This is the assignment on Joey Heatherton. I sorta figured Joey was probably a comic like Joey Bishop, but actually Joey isn't like him at all. In fact, Joey isn't even a comic.

Of course, Joey's short like Bishop - 5 feet-3 - but, where Joey Bishop has dark hair and brown eyes, Joey Heatherton has blonde hair and blue eyes - much bigger eyes than Bishop's. The general build and physical appearance are also quite different. Joey Bishop is what I would describe as wiry, which is not the way I would describe Joey Heatherton.

Joey Heatherton was born in New York on Sept. 14, 1944, the daughter of Ray Heatherton, a former musical comedy star, who until recently was The Merry Mailman on WPIX. [A New York City independent TV station.] Her mother was a dancer in the Broadway production of "Babes in Arms," in which Ray Heatherton appeared, and that is where they met.

With that backround, it is only natural that Joey would turn to what we in the trade call show biz. She got her start in "The Sound of Music" when she was only 15 years old and has been in a number of Broadway plays since. She has also done a lot of television - The Perry Como Show, The Nurses, The U.S. Steel Hour, The Virginian and Route 66. She recently completed her first motion picture, "Twilight of Honor," which is also the first starring vehicle for Richard Chamberlain - Dr. Kildare.

For a young lady who was graduated from high school only a year ago, that is an impressive list of credits. But actually Joey didn't get to her own graduation; she was appearing in summer stock in Buffalo at the time. This fall she is planning to take courses in English literature and psychology at Long Island University - between commuting to Hollywood for TV and motion picture roles.

Joey's interests are those of any teenager. But despite the fact that she swims, skates and rides horseback she is not muscular; and all the hot dogs, pastrami and gooey sundaes she eats have not made her fat, although she is, you might say, rounded. Nothing like Joey Bishop at all.

She sings some, acts too. But her body lifted Davenie Johanna Heatherton up from the ruck. Beyond these tangible virtues, what has given Joey Heatherton orbital velocity is the way she moves that torso. When TV's Hullabaloo went on the air for the first time, Joey made a guest appearance. Although the show brought grunts of wrath from the critics, Joey's dance hiked temperatures and eyebrows. The talk about the dance helped the program survive. Bob Hope made the troops laugh when he visited the Dominican Republic and Vietnam; they howled when Joey danced.

She could have been born and raised in a trunk, since mother Davenie and father Ray met as performers in a Broadwy musical. However, Joey was brought up in a prim Long Island suburb of New York. She started ballet school at six, studied four years with George Balanchine, put in a year on modern-jazz dance and went on to voice and dramatics. Richard Rodgers, "the wall-to-all carpeting of show business," says Joey, gave her the first big break with a part in The Sound of Music.

After the Broadway turn came some TV dramas and film flops. Something about Joey's sexy-kid look earned her roles as a teener in trouble. She now rejects such parts: "No more pregnant ingenues for me." Also off her list for the present are marriage and the white picket fence. "I'm not interested in marriage now. We've got a picket fence home, and it doesn't interest me." Keeping suburbia and show biz in harmony poses problems. Townsfolk don't realize their contagious colds and late hours ruin performances. She laughs at silly tales of her smoking pot and doing a strip in a bar. Father Ray tells her, "You don't have to be a kook."

Choreographer Jaime Rogers thinks Joey's "tremendous vitality and her energy make her very sensual. She gets her motor going, and it just flows out naturally." Some critics of the free-flowing body have labeled her dancing "sleazy eroticism." Joey shrugs off the hullabaloo over Hullabaloo as the result of unfortunate camera angles. She offers no apologies for her style and writes off bad reviews as symptoms of confused minds. For a girl with a fiery reputation, she lives in a remarkably temperate climate. Her home continues to be with mother, father, brother and dog, Mr. Didums, in Rockville Centre. She relaxes by riding and swimming, sometimes bursts out with clothes-buying orgies. "Somebody takes care of the money, I draw what I need." Her mother accompanies 21-year-old Joey on most road trips, and she dates rarely. "It's too much of a drag to come all the way back from Manhattan on the train with the drunks."