RIP Joanna Pettet

 

RIP Joanna Pettet - Joanna Pettet, the London-born actress who played one of the eight Vassar graduates in Sidney Lumet’s “The Group” and a spy put to work by her father, David Niven’s James Bond, in “Casino Royale”, died in Temecula, California on July 7, 2026. She was 83. Born Joanna Jane Salmon was born in London on November 16, 1942. After her father, Harold, a British Royal Air Force pilot, was killed during World War II, her mother, Cecily, remarried and settled in Montreal. Joanna took the surname of her stepfather and had $1,000 with her when she moved to New York at age 16. She studied acting at Neighborhood Playhouse and made her Broadway debut in the 1961-62 Hal Prince-produced comedy “Take Her, She’s Mine”, starring Art Carney and Elizabeth Ashley and directed by George Abbott. Her film appearances included “The Group” (1966), “Casino Royale” (1967), “The Night of the Generals” (1967), “Robbery (1967); and “Blue” (1968). On television, Pettet turned up on four episodes of Rod Serling’s NBC anthology series ‘Night Gallery’ in the early 1970s and had a recurring role spanning the fourth and fifth seasons of CBS’ ‘Knots Landing’ in 1983 as Janet Baines. Pettet was married to actor Alex Cord from 1968 to 1989 and they had a son of Damien Zachary Cord in 1969 who died in1995. As mentioned above Pettet appeared in one Euro-western as Joanne Morton in 1968’s “Blue” with Terence Stamp.