The Prehistoric Women • Joan Shawlee - Lotee

Who were the “Prehistoric Women” who made cinematic history with just 17 days of footage shot mainly on a studio sound stage?

Joan Shawlee - Lotee

 

Joan Shawlee was Lotee.   She began her entertainment career under the stage name Joyce Ring (her mother’s maiden name), a Broadway hoofer at a very young age … and she was damn good at it.  So much so that she went from the chorus, to an under-study, to the stage in the Rodgers and Hart 1942 Broadway hit musical “By Jupiter,” starring Ray Bolger.  

She was spotted by a 20th Century-Fox scout and signed to a film contract, reverted to her birth name, Joan Fulton, and was given court approval for her contract with the studio in April of 1943, along with two other 17-year-old discoveries, Cara Williams (soon a star and a future Oscar-nominee for Best Supporting Actress in The Defiant Ones) and Jeanne Crain (also soon a star and also a future Oscar-nominee for Best Actress in Pinky).

The 20th Century-Fox talent scouts were on a roll, they knew talent when they saw it, but with Joan Fulton they didn’t know about her actual age.  Fulton is 5 feet, 9 inches tall, by any standards she’s up there as far as women go, so she looked “her age.”  But when the studio found out she was only 16, they voided her contract and sent her packing.

It must have been quite the journey for the teen, cross-country train travel during World War II all the way back to New York City.   Dejected, she was soon dancing at the Copacabana, where Lou Costello (who must have known of her studio troubles from the press), persuaded her to give it another try, only this time with his studio, Universal Pictures, which took the form of signing her to a contract under his “Biltmore Productions” banner.

Shawlee had a number of uncredited bit roles at Universal, including Frontier Gal and Men in Her Diary in 1945.   It wasn’t until the February of 1946 and the horror entry from director Jean Yarbough, House of Horrors, featuring “The Creeper” (Rondo Hatton) that she actually got billing.  The film was a hit for the studio and a half-dozen other film roles quickly followed, including director William A. Seiter’s Lover Come Back, starring Lucille Ball.

In 1947, her friend and mentor, Lou Costello, brought her onboard the Abbott and Costello comedy hit, Buck Privates Come Home as Lt. Sylvia Hunter.   Soon after, she met and married businessman Walter Shawlee (a little unclear, but sometime in 1948 … he was in the printing business) and gave birth to a son, Walter Jr., in November of 1949.  She was now out of show business.

Out of the blue, “Joan Shawlee” is announced on Apr. 26, 1950 (the day before filming began) as being one of the last cast members of the stone age tribe of men-hating women in Cohen’s Prehistoric Women.   Little Walter is only five months old, but she found the time to become a genre legend with her 17-day shooting schedule as Lotee.

Shawlee had the 20th Century-Fox false start, the Universal Pictures second chance and now for the next three years it is just uncredited day work and bit parts in a number of films.  It wasn’t until her friend Lou Costello started giving her frequent guest shots on The Abbott and Costello Show that her third try at stardom finally happened.

The work is steady after this and then she becomes a screen icon when filmmaker Billy Wilder casts her in the role of “Sweet Sue” in Some Like It Hot, the leader of the “all girl” band that Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon join to avoid being rubbed out by George Raft.

She’s finally a star.  Sylvia in The Apartment, Amazon Annie in Irma la Douce, even Roger Corman paid homage to her by having cast her as Momma Monahan in his 1966 biker hit, The Wild Angels.  Shawlee was “Fat Candy” opposite Frank Sinatra in Tony Rome, “Big Nellie” in George Peppard’s 1971 Spaghetti Western, One More Train to Rob and in the same year, she played Alice in director Daniel Mann’s horror smash, Willard.   She even starred in her own television series, Aggie.      

  

Her career was non-stop right up until her untimely death from cancer on March 22, 1987.  Sad, but Lotee was gone.