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<\/p>\nActress Joan Van Ark has had a long and very successful career in Hollywood but it is her role of Valene Ewing on the primetime soap opera Knots Landing that helped her made a name for herself and cement her place in the film industry.<\/p>\n
Born on June 16, 1943, in New York City, New York, to parents who were not in any way related to television, Joan always knew she belonged in Hollywood. She started performing when she was still very young and during a performance in Denver she met the person who would influence her life and career a great deal, actress Julie Harris. It was Harris who persuaded Joan to attend the well-respected Yale Drama School. She even helped her get a scholarship, making Joan the second woman to enroll into the school at the time.<\/p>\n
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Ron Eisenberg\/Michael Ochs Archives\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cShe [Harris] wrote to the dean and asked him to meet me. Long story short, my parents drove me to New Haven, Connecticut, to meet the dean, who gave me a scholarship,\u201d Joan recalled.\u201d It was meant to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
After being part of the theater for some years, Joan turned to television. She appeared on television series including Temperature\u2019s Rising, Spider-Woman, and Days of Our Lives and even in one episode of Bonanza. Then, in 1978, she made several appearances as Valene Ewing on Dallas, which later turned into the most significant role she has ever played. As Dallas became a huge hit, the network decided to film its spin-off Knots Landing in which Joan reprised her role of Valene Ewing. In fact, Knots Landing was written before Dallas, but as producers needed to decided which show to work on they chose Dallas because they wanted a \u201cbig rich family\u201d show.<\/p>\n
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Youtube\/DALLAS70<\/p>\n
Joan was a leading character for 13 seasons in Knots Landing and it was her husband who persuaded her to accept the role. At the time she was offered to be part of the series, Joan was already working on two other projects.<\/p>\n
At one point, when the character of Valene Ewing\u2019s mother was about to be introduced to the show, Joan could never imagine the role of her TV mother would be given to the person who meant the world to her; none other than Julie Harris.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the producers told me they had finally last someone to play my mother, I held my breath,\u201d she recalled in a 1984 interview with Florida Today.<\/p>\n
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Charley Gallay\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018Oh my God, are they going to say Phyllis Diller or Zsa Zsa Gabor, or who?\u2019 Then they said it was Julie Harris, and I went right through the roof. I couldn\u2019t believe they had picked her to be my mother. They didn\u2019t even know we were friends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Actress Joan Van Ark has had a long and very successful career in Hollywood but it is her role of Valene Ewing on the primetime soap opera… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n