Joyce Mackenzie, a talented actress of the early 1950s, was born Joyce Elaine Mackenzie in Redwood, California, to a doctor's family. During World War II, she earned the nickname "Joyce the Joiner" while working as a carpenter's assistant at Western Pipe and Steel, a shipbuilding company. This job helped her pay for her acting tuition.
After the war, Joyce began her acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse, where she sold tickets and occasionally appeared on stage. Her big break came when she was spotted by a talent scout in 1948 and landed an uncredited role in the air force drama Twelve O'Clock High (1949).
Her first significant role came when she was cast as a rival to Dorothy McGuire in the marital comedy Mother Didn't Tell Me (1950) for 20th Century Fox. Joyce then had the opportunity to star in a loan-out to RKO, but the resulting film, Destination Murder (1950),was a commercial failure.
Despite this setback, Joyce continued to rack up credits, appearing in fifteen films over the next three years. She played supporting roles in A-grade releases like Broken Arrow (1950),On the Riviera (1951),The Racket (1951),and Deadline - U.S.A. (1952),opposite big-time box-office stars James Stewart, Danny Kaye, Robert Mitchum, and Humphrey Bogart, respectively.
Joyce also played Jane to Lex Barker's Tarzan in Tarzan and the She-Devil (1953) for RKO, becoming the eleventh actress to take on the role. Her final film was The French Line (1953),a musical comedy released in 3-D, in which she played a model who swapped identities with Jane Russell.
Joyce retired from acting in the early 1960s, after guest-starring in an episode of Perry Mason (1957). By 1976, she had switched professions, working as an English teacher at a high school in Laguna Niguel, California. Joyce was married three times, to real estate mogul Walter Leimert, construction tycoon Robert L. Driver, and finally, to Victor Benedict Hassing, who predeceased her in 1980.
