Joyce M. Harrington of Manhattan died March 10, 2011. She was 79 years of age when she peacefully left this world. The cause of death was cancer.
Joyce was born on January 29, 1932, and spent her early childhood in Jersey City, a daughter of Roy W. Shoults and Helen Goethal. In 1938 Helen took in her brother Freddie (Joyce’s Uncle) who had served in World War 1 and had been gassed, and because of this he had contracted tuberculosis. Both Helen and Joyce in turn contracted the illness, and Joyce’s mother passed away when Joyce was seven years old, an event that deeply affected her. In the 1930s TB was routinely treated by placement sanitariums (widespread vaccine use did not occur until after WW2). The TB sanitarium of the 1930s was not a happy place, and for Joyce, who had lost her mother, the isolation was intense. At one point she eloped from the grounds of the facility, literally climbing out the window. She recovered and, reunited with her family, eventually moved to California where her father remarried.
The sense of isolation stuck with her through her childhood. Joyce was tall for her age, and residents of California at the time considered any newcomers to be “Oakies” or “Arkies”, derogatory terms used for those farmers who fled the 1930s dustbowl. In a fashion that would prove to be typical for her, she decided that the best course of action would be to read every book in the local library, including those designated for adults (which at that time included James Joyce and other writers who described intense personal relations). A rebel from an early age, her protests against the banning of books was of no avail.
Roy Shoults was not a kind man, and Joyce’s descriptions paint a picture of intense emotional abuse. At the age of 17 she decided she had had enough: With no plan in place she walked to the library to return some books, and kept walking. That night she turned herself in to the police as a teenage runaway, told them she had been abused, and that she was not going back. After a brief stay in a wealthy family’s foster care she was on her own, working variously for the Army Quartermaster Corps, at a doorknob factory, and anything else to get by.
In the 1950s, Joyce changed focus from the inner-directed pursuit of books and tried acting. At the Pasadena Playhouse she trained and made new friends, many of whom would later form the core of American “method” acting in the 20th Century. Her colleagues at the Playhouse included Dustin Hoffman, Harry Dean Stanton, Robert Duvall, and others. She knew Dustin and Harry well, but was fond of “Bobbie Duvall”. The two of them were dance partners, and after the whole group of aspiring actors moved to New York City in 1958 she and Bobbie continued to go ballroom dancing together. Unfortunately, acting was not in the cards for Joyce. As her friends began getting roles in new movies by up-and-coming directors, she once again changed focus.
It was around 1959 that Joyce met a young photographer named John Ross, a gregarious world traveler. At that time John was a freelance photojournalist with contacts in the worlds of ballet and classical music, but he loved traveling between New York, Paris, Rome, and Egypt the best. His friendships were wide-ranging and he had a distinct talent for bringing people together. Through John, Joyce met Phillip Harrington, another globe-trotting photojournalist who worked for LOOK Magazine. A year later they were married at Phil’s small apartment on Leroy Street in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan; John Ross was the wedding photographer.
Within a few years the couple had two children: Christopher Michael, whose middle name was in honor of Michael Anthony “Tony” Vaccaro (another LOOK Magazine photographer), and Evan Ross, who took his middle name from John Ross. The growing family needed a larger living space, which resulted in first a move to Cobble Hill Brooklyn, and then to a stately brownstone in Park Slope. During this time Phil continued his world travels, scoring several major photojournalistic assignments in Africa and Russia. For a time Joyce worked for the American Society of Magazine Photographers, though this was not to be her career.
The family fortunes changed in 1972 with the closing of LOOK Magazine. The golden age of photojournalism was drawing to a close due to the encroachment of the television set in the average American’s home. In spring 1972 the family relocated to West Virginia and then to Ohio as Phil switched jobs. In West Virginia Joyce again tried acting with a local playhouse in Parkersburg. There she played roles in Butterflies are Free and Hedda Gabbler, but this was more of a social outlet than a passion. By 1974 she worked at the Pogue’s Department store in Cincinnati as a corporate secretary. Life in small towns was stifling to Joyce, and seeking to find creative outlets in the conservative atmosphere she returned to her first love, that of books, and decided to try her hand at writing. Her first story was written one weekend that summer and was published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (in the September 1972 issue). The story was titled The Purple Shroud and involved classic plotlines of seething emotions and murder, but with a twist that would have been shocking at the time. This was no genteel Agatha Christie whodunit. Although my mother never read the confessional poets such as Anne Sexton or Sylvia Plath (she thought they were whiners), the narrative of Shroud was alarmingly visceral – one can feel the killer’s motivation. The reader is left with an impression that there is much more beneath the surface, and as my mother explained to me once, she never grew tired of killing her father. The truth will out, and the subtext that Joyce used in her stories was much more disturbingly pleasing than the raw expressions of angst used by Sexton.
The first astonishment to Joyce was that she got published on the first try. The second was that she was nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe award, given out by the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) for best short story of the year. The third was that she won the prize. She had found her passion, and she threw herself into it despite the constraints of being a housewife with two young children, who also worked a day job.
We children grew to know and love the clanging of the Smith-Corona electric typewriter. Phil had his photographic-scientific laboratory so it was only fair that Joyce had her writing den, where every weekend she would enclose herself from 7am until noon, smoke cigarettes with vigor, and engage in a ritual pummeling of the Smith-Corona’s carriage. The older among us will recall how loud those machines are, they are NOT delicate machines. Soon the house was awash in manuscripts, and several times a year there would be another short story published by Alfred Hitchcock or Ellery.
Having had enough of the country, the family returned to New York City in 1976, this time a to large house in the Prospect Park South area of Brooklyn. Joyce had never had a college experience – not a single class. Yet she managed to immediately land a job at a major advertising firm, Foote, Cone, & Belding (FCB) which was located at 230 Park Avenue, known then as the Pan Am Building. She soon worked her way up and earned the sponsorship of FCB president John O’Toole. By 1986 she was Vice President of the company and Director of Public Relations, which was no small matter considering that the company’s accounts included Colgate, Frito-Lay, Clairol, and others. 1988 saw a hostile merger of FCB by Leber Katz Partners and many of her trusted colleagues found themselves out of work. As a result both she and O’Toole jumped ship and joined the American Association of Advertising Agencies (the 4As). There Joyce became editor of their trade magazine, Agency. She knew everyone in advertising in New York, and many more worldwide.
Throughout her time in advertising she found that her social and creative energies were used well, and she continued to write mysteries. She published three books: No One Knows My Name (1981), Family Reunion (1982), and Dreemz of the Night (1987). Also during this time were dozens more short stories in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and others.
The members of MWA deserve special mention. This group of successful writers welcomed into their midst an unknown, and many of them became colleagues, supporters, and friends to Joyce. The Manhattan-based members of the MWA formed a dinner group, known as the Adams Round Table, which included Joyce, Mary Higgins Clark, Tom Chastain, Whitley Strieber, Dorothy Davis, Lucy Freeman (who became a close friend to Joyce), and others. The members of the Adams Round Table have published numerous collaborations, including the Murder in Manhattan series.
By 1999 Joyce’s health was in decline. Although no longer a smoker, she had other ailments that sapped her strength and prevented her from doing what she loved best – writing mysteries. She confessed that she thought she had killed her father enough. A resident of the Manhattan’s Upper East Side, she steadfastly refused to leave. On September 11th, 2001, I urged her to flee to upstate New York. She scoffed and insisted that if the ship were about to sink she would go with it. She spent the decade reading (although she had long since given up on the childhood dream of reading every book), watching Law & Order, socializing, and visiting Manhattan’s cultural spots.
Joyce Harrington’s surviving immediate family are Christopher, who is a lawyer who lives with his wife Melinda in Wallingford, Connecticut, and her younger son Evan, who is a forensic psychologist who lives with his wife Debbie in Chicago. Joyce will be missed by all who knew her. As a true New Yorker, it was her wish that her ashes be scattered in New York harbor. And so it happened.
–Evan Harrington, Ph.D., Chicago, 2011
