The Celebrity Collector - Joan van Ark

Joan van Ark, Joan of Arc and the fleur-de-lis

Joan van Ark’s father was so sure his daughter would become a star that he named her after one of the best-known figures in history, the French heroine Joan of Arc. “He thought it would look good on a marquee,” van Ark said with a laugh. The actress, best known for her years on Dallas and Knots Landing, went on to collect a symbol that fits the name: the fleur-de-lis.

When Joan of Arc led French troops to victory over the English, she carried a white banner that showed God blessing the French royal emblem, the fleur-de-lis. She was eventually burned at the stake, which secured her place in history as a martyr. The emblem outlived her and continued to stand for French royalty.

In English the name means “flower of the lily.” The design is a stylized lily (some read it as a lotus) with three petals. By tradition the petals stand for perfection, light and life, and in Christian use they can also signify the Holy Trinity. The Roman Catholic Church made the lily the special emblem of the Virgin Mary, and some military units, including units of the U.S. Army, have used the fleur-de-lis as a sign of martial power and strength.

What Joan van Ark’s fleur-de-lis collection held

On antiques and decorative wares the fleur-de-lis usually turns up on bronze, brass or silver, and the pieces tend to be upscale and elegant. Van Ark made a career of playing wealthy, well-appointed women, so a kinship with a symbol of royalty and class was hardly an accident.

Her collection was broad and freewheeling. It took in bathroom candles, a large Italian paper clip, a cut glass necklace, a gold letter opener, a pair of front door mats, votive candleholders, a blue hanging tapestry, personal stationery and note paper, bookends and frosted tumblers. One favorite was a sugar spoon topped by a small figure of Joan of Arc herself, waving her banner.

Many pieces came as gifts. Her husband, TV anchorman John Marshall, contributed, as did their only child, Vanessa, a voice-over talent. So did her sister Carol, a writer and lecturer, her hairdresser Laurent D, whose salon was frequented by the stars, and her personal assistant, Rande.

The pieces were scattered through her home in Studio City, California, and none of them sat behind glass. “I don’t purposely display them,” she said. Nothing went into hutches or cabinets. “I love the fleur-de-lis because I’m tied to it emotionally. Joan of Arc is my namesake. I played her character while still in my teens, at a music festival held at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Even back then, my personal stationery had the fleur-de-lis on it.”

The stolen Joan of Arc medals

Van Ark learned how much the objects meant to her when three gold Joan of Arc medals were stolen. She had bought them in France on her honeymoon in 1968, at Joan of Arc’s birthplace, and always wore them for good luck while performing. “I was in a play called Star Dust at the Tiffany Theatre and laid them down in my dressing room,” she said. “I left for just a bit and when I came back, they were gone.”

The loss hurt for more than one reason. “These were the same medals I had given to my brother Dexter for good luck when he went to fight in Vietnam,” she said. “And I wore them all the time when I worked, so it was an emotional loss. I didn’t know how I was ever going to replace them. I never did see them again. They were little dime-sized medals.”

Laurent, her hairdresser, is French, and when she told him the story he contacted his mother-in-law back in France. “She found me a wonderful little gold Joan of Arc medal, which I now wear for good luck,” van Ark said. Her daughter Vanessa later brought back three silver medals from a trip to the Joan of Arc cathedral in Paris, so the gap was at least filled.

A Boulder childhood and a start at Yale

Van Ark was born in New York City. Her father, who came from Holland (Holland, Michigan, that is), made a good living in advertising and public relations. On a business trip to Denver he saw Boulder from a hilltop and declared, “This is where I want to raise my family.” He did, and Joan and her three siblings grew up there. “With a view of Pike’s Peak to the left and Cheyenne, Wyoming, to the right, we really did have an idyllic upbringing in a post-card setting,” she said. Her brother Mark still lived in the family house.

She took to drama early. At 10 she was writing plays for herself and her little sister, Carol, and community theater followed. At 15 she set Boulder on its ear as Anne Frank. Around the same time the veteran actress Julie Harris was in a play in Denver, and van Ark interviewed her for an article in the Rocky Mountain News. “I asked her what I should do after high school,” van Ark said, “and she told me to apply to the Yale Graduate School of Drama.”

Harris had been the youngest person ever admitted to the Yale drama program. It was a graduate course, but in exceptional cases Yale would take a high school graduate, and Harris thought van Ark was one. Her letter of recommendation got Joan in, which made van Ark the second youngest person admitted after Harris. Years later the two played mother and daughter on Knots Landing.

From the Guthrie stage to Valene Ewing

After one year at Yale, van Ark auditioned for the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and joined its ensemble company, which launched her as a professional actor with an Equity card. Her first Guthrie role was in Molière’s The Miser, opposite Hume Cronyn and Zoe Caldwell, followed by Death of a Salesman with Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. She became the resident ingenue at the Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., and then joined the national touring company of Mike Nichols’ Barefoot in the Park, all before she turned 21.

In the early 1970s she began appearing in guest roles on television. Her first regular nighttime series were the sitcoms Temperatures Rising and We’ve Got Each Other. Daytime drama came next, as Janene Whitney on Days of Our Lives, and that led to Dallas, the CBS hit that spun off Knots Landing. Van Ark played Valene Ewing, the stand-by-your-man wife, on both: Dallas in the early 1980s and Knots Landing through 1993. She directed several episodes of Knots and was a key character in its two-hour series finale.

She also did voice work for cartoon shows such as Santo Bugito and Spiderwoman, made many guest appearances on series and in TV movies, and kept working onstage in Camino Real, The Vagina Monologues and, as of 2003, The Exonerated in New York City. Her work in Molière’s School for Wives earned her a Tony nomination.

Marathons and a daily run

At the time of the interview in 2003, van Ark kept fit by running 8 to 10 miles a day, except when work made it impossible. “I’m addicted,” she once told TV Guide. “I need to run every day. If I don’t I feel cheated.” She had run more than a dozen marathons, the Boston Marathon among them. “Running is a great way to relieve stress and clear the mind,” she said.

Like other actors who collected, she bought what she loved and lived with it. Adrienne Barbeau took the same approach with her Fiesta and primitive antiques, which she used every day. For French decorative wares of the upscale kind van Ark favored, see the guide to Limoges porcelain, and for another television actress and her finds, Cindy Pickett.