According to the Social Security Death Index, Tompkins, listed as Joan Swenson at death, was living in New York when she procured her Social Security number, probably in the late 1930s. In 1938, at the age of twenty-three, she joined Henry Fonda in performing plays in White Plains, New York. Thereafter, she performed on radio in the soap opera role of Nora Drake on This Is Nora Drake, which ran on CBS radio until 1959. She appeared on Broadway in New York City in stage productions of Pride and Prejudice and My Sister Eileen. During her radio performances, she met Karl Swenson, who portrayed the Scandinavian Lars Hanson on Michael Landon's Little House on the Prairie NBC television series. Tompkins herself guest starred twice on Little House. The couple married sometime after Swenson and his first wife, the former Virginia Hanscom (1908–2003),divorced. They were living in southern California by 1957.
According to the Social Security Death Index, Tompkins, listed as Joan Swenson at death, was living in New York when she procured her Social Security number, probably in the late 1930s. In 1938, at the age of twenty-three, she joined Henry Fonda in performing plays in White Plains, New York. Thereafter, she performed on radio in the soap opera role of Nora Drake on This Is Nora Drake, which ran on CBS radio until 1959. She appeared on Broadway in New York City in stage productions of Pride and Prejudice and My Sister Eileen. During her radio performances, she met Karl Swenson, who portrayed the Scandinavian Lars Hanson on Michael Landon's Little House on the Prairie NBC television series. Tompkins herself guest starred twice on Little House. The couple married sometime after Swenson and his first wife, the former Virginia Hanscom (1908–2003),divorced. They were living in southern California by 1957.
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