Joan Copeland, a Broadway actress who also appeared on TV shows including Law and Order, died at the age of 99. She died in her New York residence in her sleep, according to her son Eric, according to The Hollywood Reporter. She was the sister of playwright Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe’s former sister-in-law.
She had roles in theatre productions such as Detective Story and Pal Joey, as well as daytime dramas such as Love of Life and Search for Tomorrow.
Joan Miller was born in New York and changed her stage name to Joan Copeland because she didn’t want to use her brother’s name. In 1948, she made her Broadway debut in Sundown Beach, and she returned a dozen times in subsequent decades in shows such as Detective Story, 45 Seconds from Broadway, and The American Clock.
Copeland represented her mother in the latter piece, set during the Great Depression and written by her famous older brother in 1980, for which she won a Drama Desk Award. She is most remembered for her portrayal of Vera Simpson, a bored affluent socialite, in the 1977 Broadway production of Pal Joey.
She transitioned from the theatre to the small screen in the 1950s, appearing in several notable roles in long-running US daytime soap operas.
Andrea Whiting in “Search for Tomorrow,” Gwendolyn Lord Abbott in “One Life to Live” from 1967 to 1972, and twin sisters Maggie and Kay Logan in “Love of Life” were among them.
She later appeared in films like As the World Turns, How to Survive a Marriage and The Edge of Night.
On the other hand, Copeland mentioned how she had trouble finding TV and radio work earlier in her career because of her ties to her brother, who was blacklisted in 1957 after being convicted of contempt of Congress for refusing to give the identities of supposed Communist writers with whom he had spoken.
Miller’s sister worked as Judge Rebecca Stein in the courtroom drama TV series “Law & Order” for ten years, from 1991 to 2001. Her husband, George Kupchik, a bacteriologist, was her husband from 1943 until he died in 1989.
