Joyce Heims was an American screenwriter best known for her collaborations with actor-director Clint Eastwood.
21 Facts About Jo Heims
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Jo Heims worked various jobs before starting a career writing for film and television during the 1960s.
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Jo Heims continued to screenwrite throughout the decade before dying of breast cancer in 1978.
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Jo Heims was born in Philadelphia on January 15,1930.
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Jo Heims worked as a model, dancer, and fashion illustrator and moved to California in the 1950s to become a writer in show business.
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Jo Heims was first credited as a production secretary on the science fiction movie Missile to the Moon in 1958.
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Jo Heims worked primarily as a secretary throughout the next decade while writing and selling screenplays on the side.
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Jo Heims received writing credits in television and movies in a wide range of genres for both independent and major film studios.
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Jo Heims drafted a 60-page screenplay for Play Misty for Me, a psychological thriller that would soon become Eastwood's directorial debut.
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Jo Heims based the latter character on a woman she knew after it was suggested to her by an acquaintance.
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Jo Heims shelved the project, so when Eastwood later signed a three-picture contract with Universal, he regained the screenplay and had it revised by Dean Riesner.
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Jo Heims contributed to the story of the latter film, but she received no screen credit.
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That same year, Universal distributed the thriller You'll Like My Mother, a script that Heims adapted from a novel by Naomi A Hintze.
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Jo Heims additionally served as an associate producer for the movie, allowing her to coordinate some of its creative elements.
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Jo Heims developed the male lead with Eastwood in mind to play the part.
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Eastwood's then-mistress Jo Ann Harris was a strong contender for the female lead, but Jo Heims felt Harris was wrong for the part and suggested her friend Sondra Locke.
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Jo Heims set up the very first meeting between Locke and Eastwood, but Kay Lenz ultimately earned the part as Locke was too old to be credible in it.
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Jo Heims then completed the women in prison teleplay Nightmare in Badham County, a television movie.
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Not long after, Jo Heims fell ill with a breast cancer diagnosis.
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Jo Heims wrote the teleplay as long as she could before handing it off to executive producer Alan Surgal to finish.
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Jo Heims died on April 22,1978, in Los Angeles at the age of 48.