Joan Raymond

Joan Raymond is a fictional insurance investigator and a supporting character featured in the Universal Monsters film series. Played by actress Jane Randolph, she appeared in the 1948 horror/comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.

Biography
Joan Raymond was an insurance investigator for Shippers Insurance, Inc. during the late 1940s. In 1948, she was assigned to investigate a claim by her company's client, Mister McDougal, who claimed that two of the exhibits he had purchased for his House of Horrors, namely the bodies of Count Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster had been stolen. McDougal accused two baggage handlers, Chick Young and Wilbur Grey of stealing the exhibits and had them arrested.

In order to get to the truth of the matter, Joan Raymond bailed them both out of jail and pretended to be madly in love with Wilbur Grey. When Wilbur asked her when this mad attraction came over her, she told him that she first saw him in the baggage room and believed that it was love at first sight.

Joan's tactic proved problematic as she soon discovered that Wilbur already had a girlfriend; a scientist named Doctor Sandra Mornay. What poor Wilbur didn't realize at the time however, was that both of these women were feigning interest in him in order to satisfy their own needs. Joan learned that Wilbur was going to attend a masquerade ball and asked if he would take her with him. Even though Wilbur already had a date with Sandra, he wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to go out with two girls at the same time.

Joan, Wilbur and Chick all went to Doctor Mornay's residence, which was a castle located on a nearby island. She met Sandr Mornay who immediately grew jealous and felt that her presence might upset her own plans for Wilbur (which included transplanting his brain into the body of the Frankenstein Monster). Rifling through Joan's purse, Sandra learned that she was an insurance investigator and immediately informed her employer Doctor Lejos (who was in fact Count Dracula). Dracula took measures to get Joan out of the way.

At the masquerade party, Joan began to drop the pretense of liking Wilbur when she began to develop a genuine attraction to Doctor Mornay's unsuspecting assistant, Doctor Stevens.

Dracula followed the group to the masquerade party and used his powers of hypnosis to lull Joan into a deep trance. He likely would have killed her but for the timely arrival of Chick, Wilbur and Professor Stevens.

The entire group ended up back at the castle where they became involved in a chain of events that involved not only Dracula and the Frankenstein Monster, but the Wolf Man as well. Professor Stevens protected Joan from the threat posed by the monsters and the two proved instrumental in the destruction of the Frankenstein Monster.

Notes & Trivia



 * Playing the role of Joan Raymond was Jane Randolph's second-to-last film work and her final work in the horror genre. It is her twentieth film in total and her fifteenth credited role.


 * Joan Raymond is one of two female leads featured in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The other is the character of Doctor Sandra Mornay, who is played by actress Lenore Aubert.


 * Actress Jane Randolph passed away on May 4th, 2009.


 * Jane Randolph is also known for playing the role of Alice Moore-Reed in the 1942 supernatural thriller Cat People, directed by Jacques Tourneur, as well as its 1944 sequel, The Curse of the Cat People.