Joan Staley (born Joan Lynette McConchie on 20 May 1940 in Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an American actress and model. She is perhaps best known for being Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for its November 1958 issue. Her centerfold was photographed by Lawrence Schiller and Ron Vogel. According to The Playmate Book, she was pregnant at the time of her Playmate shoot.
Joan grew up in Los Angeles. Her parents encouraged her to learn to play the violin at a very young age. At six, she joined Peter Meremblum's Junior Symphony. This led to her first film appearance, as a child violinist in The Emperor Waltz, starring Bing Crosby and Joan Fontaine.
Her father's business took him all over Europe, and Joan went to high school in Paris. She attended Chapman College but left shortly thereafter to pursue a show business career. She worked as a back-up singer for Sam Phillips and worked as a secretary to make ends meet while she went to casting calls.
Her breakthrough came in 1958, when a photographer sent her pictures to Playboy. She posed for the magazine, and ended up becoming Miss November 1958. The executives at MGM liked her look, and cast her in a series of "cheesecake" roles in films such as Ocean's Eleven and Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Her first marriage, to Chuck Staley, was brief. They were married in the late 1950s and lived in Memphis. She had a daughter, Sherrye, who was born in 1959. By the early 1960s, they were divorced.
Joan enjoyed a film and television career that lasted through the 1960s and into the early 1970s. In 1966, Joan suffered a horseback riding accident; she stopped working in films after that, and concentrated on television work.
She married again, in 1967, to Dale Sheets, an executive with Universal Pictures was more successful; they had three children together. Between her and Dale, they had seven children altogether. As of 2003, they have ten grandchildren.
Today, Joan lives with her Dale in Southern California, where she is active in consumer affairs. Her granddaughter-in-law is Donna Perry, the Miss November 1994 Playmate.
