- Was the second wife of choreographer and director Bob Fosse. She and Fosse divorced after he left her for Gwen Verdon. Joan became very sick near the end of their marriage due to complications from diabetes, and died of a heart attack at the age of 43.
- In the film All That Jazz (1979) starring Roy Scheider, the angel character played by Jessica Lange is dressed in a similar way to Joan in her final performance in the off-Broadway play "The Infernal Machine" (1958). It seems Fosse was deeply disturbed by Joan's early death, a sorrow that lasted throughout the rest of his life according to his subsequent wife Gwen Verdon.
- She was a student of George Balanchine in the first year of the School of American Ballet (SAB).
- Joan suffered from a heart condition for seven years, complicated by type I diabetes, before her death in 1961, She was 43 even though the New York Times reported her age as 38. Joan had shaved five years off her age long ago for career purposes..
- Married to dancer Bob Fosse, her second husband, it was Joan who encouraged him to rise above his nightclub existence and become a choreographer.
- Worked for a year in the fifteen-minute ballet segment of the stage show at Radio City Music Hall which required four performances a day, seven days a week, with four weeks on and one week off, then five weeks on and one week off . For many audience members it was their first exposure to ballet , which appealed to the artistic sensibilities of Joan McCracken, but she did not enjoy it because of the exhausting schedule. Contrary to many sources she was never a Rockette - those quick-tapping, high-kicking, leggy showgirls - largely because at only 5'1" it was likely McCracken would have gotten her head kicked off.
- She began her career as a dancer and performed with the School of American ballet before she joined the Littlefield Ballet in Philadelphia and performed in England, France and Belgium.
- Truman Capote admitted that McCracken was the main inspiration for the character of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961).
- Her first husband was novelist/playwright John Paul ("Jack") Dunphy (1914-1992). They met while both were dancers in Philadelphia. Jack's books include John Fury, Nightmovers and The Murderous McLaughlins. Divorced in 1951, he later became the longtime partner of Truman Capote. In a biography of Joan entitled The Girl Who Fell Down by Lisa Jo Sagolla, it is said McCracken violently reacted to losing her brother in combat and Capote, to her anger, used her experience in his film Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) in a similar scene with protagonist Holly Golightly.
- In the film Hollywood Canteen (1944), she was the featured dancer in the "Ballet in Jive" number.
- Was cast by Agnes de Mille for the Broadway chorus of "Oklahoma" as a can-can dancer. She went on to appear in the Broadway musicals "Bloomer Girl," "Billion Dollar Baby," "Dance Me a Song" and "Me and Juliet".
- She was once famously described by film critic James Agee as looking "like a libidinous peanut".
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