Joan Darling (born April 14, 1935, Boston, Massachusetts) is an actress, film and television director and a dramatic arts instructor.
Joan "Joni" Kugell began her career with the New York improvisational theater troupe "Premise Players", and soon graduated to off-Broadway and Broadway productions. She gravitated to feature films and television in the 1970s. She was a regular on the law series, Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, playing office secretary to Arthur Hill, Lee Majors, Reni Santoni, and David Soul.
Darling directed episodes of the television series Rhoda, Doc, Taxi, Hizzonner, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Magnum, P.I., and Steven Spielberg's Amazing Stories, as well as the feature film The Check is in the Mail, and a number of made-for-television films.
She directed the famous "Chuckles Bites the Dust" episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and received a 1976 Emmy nomination for her efforts. [1]
In 1976 she broke new ground when she directed the feature film, First Love, starring Susan Dey. At the time, this made Darling part of a tiny circle of women directors to direct a major Hollywood studio feature film. Only such Hollywood icons as Ida Lupino and Dorothy Arzner preceded her in doing so. She was one of the pioneering women directors (along with Karen Arthur, Gabrielle Beaumont, and Sharron Miller) who worked regularly in mainstream Hollywood in the 1970s and 1980s.
Darling was married three times. Her first husband was physicist Robert Klein; her second, folk musician Erik Darling; and her present husband is Bill Svanoe, a writer and a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.[2]