Comedienne, Singer. A theatre, television, and night club entertainer, it was said of her "She has the voice of an angel, and the wit of a devil". Raised in London, she was a self-described "precocious performer" who won a talent competition at 11 by doing impressions, her impersonation of Bette Davis later becoming legendary. A bright child, she earned a scholarship to the Sacred Heart Academy, Victoria, but dropped out at 14 to pursue a career in show business, her professional debut coming in 1937 at the Queen's Theatre of Poplar. Joan added musical numbers to her comedy routines and was soon a headliner; a singer of multi-octave range, she recorded several best-sellers for Decca. In 1954 she opened a 656 performance run of "Talk of the Town" at the Adelphi Theatre, then in the late 1950s developed her own two hour "An Evening With Joan Turner". Her cabaret and recording work continued, for years making her the highest paid female entertainer in Britain while enabling her to raise large sums for charity, but drinking, unreliability, and an unpleasant personality reduced her opportunities and gambling destroyed her fortune, pushing her into bankruptcy by 1977. Still, there were successes; she won critical acclaim for "The Killing of Sister George" in the early 1970s, had noted runs in "Oliver!", and "Call Me Madam", toured America in the early 1980s, and was a guest of honour for the Queen Mother's 90th birthday. In the 1990s there was further decline as she was fired from her television roles in "Brookside" and "EastEnders" as well as from a revival of "Oliver!" and in 1996 returned illegally to the United States where she failed to find work, drank and gambled away such money as she had, and ended up as a bag-lady on the streets of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. In 2001 her children got her to go back to England where she lived out her days at a sheltered home in Surrey, penned the appropriately titled autobiography "I Thought it Grew on Trees", and died of the effects of advanced age.