Joanna Roos

Joanna Roos was an American actress and playwright who worked on Broadway, radio, television and film. Born in Brooklyn in 1901 and raised partly in Syracuse, New York, she studied at Syracuse University and at Yvette Guilbert's School of the Theatre. Her professional stage debut came in 1921 in The Harlequinade at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, and in 1930 she played Sofya Alexandrovna in Uncle Vanya at the Cort Theatre. Her many Broadway credits included Abe Lincoln in Illinois, The Trojan Women and Orpheus Descending. On television she acted in the anthology series The Web in 1954, and she was heard on radio soap operas. She played Althea Raven on Love of Life from 1955 to 1957 and returned as Sarah Dale Caldwell McCauley, a role she held from 1968 to 1978, retiring then. A founding member of the New Dramatists Committee, she also wrote plays that won awards.