Joan Leslie (born Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel; January 26, 1925 – October 12, 2015) was an American actress and vaudevillian, who during the Hollywood Golden Age, appeared in such films as High Sierra (1941), Sergeant York (1941), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Early life Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel was born on January 26, 1925, in Highland Park, Michigan, the youngest child of John and Agnes Brodel. John was a bank clerk and Agnes was a pianist. Joan's two older sisters, Betty (born 1919) and Mary Brodel (1916–2015), shared their mother's musical interest and started to learn how to play instruments, such as the saxophone and the banjo, at an early age. They began performing in front of audiences in acts that included singing and dancing. Leslie joined the duo at two and a half years of age. She was soon able to play the accordion. With her father losing his job in the mid-1930s, the Great Depression caused financial difficulties for the family. As a result, the three sisters entered show business as vaudeville performers to support the family. They began touring in Canada and the United States. Collectively, they were known as The Three Brodels. As an attempt to bypass child labor laws at the time, both Mary and Joan pretended to be older than they were. When Leslie was nine, she told child labor investigators that she was 16 years old. Joan proved to be the scene stealer of the three sisters because of her impersonations of figures such as Katharine Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier, and Jimmy Durante. Coming from a family of Irish ancestry, Leslie was raised as a Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools in Detroit, Toronto, and Montreal. Early Hollywood career In 1936, 11-year-old Leslie caught the attention of a talent scout from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) when the three Brodel sisters were performing in New York. She was given a six-month contract with the studio, earning $200 per week. While working at the studio, she attended MGM's Little Red Schoolhouse with other child actors such as Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, and Freddie Bartholomew. Her first film role was in Camille (1936), a romantic drama starring Greta Garbo and Robert Taylor. She played Taylor's younger sister Marie Jeanette, but her speaking scenes were deleted and she was uncredited. MGM had trouble finding suitable roles for her, and she was let go by the studio along with