Joyce Benignia Van Patten

Joyce Van Patten is an American stage, film and television actress. She has appeared in dozens of television series and was a member of the original cast of the daytime drama As the World Turns. She also played Joyce, the jilted fiancee of Peter Sellers in the cult classic movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas in 1968.

Van Patten was born in New York City, the daughter of Josephine Rose (née Acerno), an Italian American magazine advertising executive, and Richard Byron Van Patten, a Dutch American interior decorator.

She made her prime-time TV debut as a featured regular on The Danny Kaye Show, after which she co-starred with Bob Denver and Herb Edelman in the 1968-70 sitcom The Good Guys as Claudia Gramus, the long-suffering wife of diner owner Bert Gramus (played by Edelman).

On a 1976 episode of Columbo, Van Patten had a leading role as a museum owner and curator who commits murder. In 1979, she appeared opposite Mary Tyler Moore in CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Hour as Iris Chapman, secretary and assistant to Moore's Mary McKinnon character.

In 1995, she played Maureen, Jennie's mother for two seasons on the WB sitcom Unhappily Ever After.

Her last series role to date came as Carol Prudy on two episodes of the ABC Network comedy/drama Desperate Housewives.

Van Patten has had supporting roles in many films, among them the head of the Little League in the original Bad News Bears.

She also has appeared often on Broadway, in shows including Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs, Murder at the Howard Johnson's, Rumors, and Rabbit Hole.

She has usually been astringent in her screen roles. One exception was her recurring role as Maude Pomfritt, the treacly wife of schoolteacher Leander Pomfritt (played by William Schallert), in the TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-1963).

Van Patten had a supporting role as Rob Schneider's wife in the comedy Grown Ups (2010).

She is the younger sister of actor Dick Van Patten, and aunt to actors Vincent Van Patten, James Van Patten and Nels Van Patten. She was formerly married to the late actor Martin Balsam, and is the mother of actress Talia Balsam, who was briefly married to actors George Clooney and Hal Lynch. She is divorced from actor-director Dennis Dugan.