Diana Hyland, a striking beauty with a confident air, was born Joan Diana Gentner on January 25, 1936, in Ohio. She began her acting career in summer stock as a teenager, before graduating from Cleveland Heights High School. In 1955, at the age of 19, she moved to New York to pursue her acting dreams, initially billed as Diane Gentner.
After a tour of the play "Look Back in Anger", Hyland broke through on Broadway as the ingénue in Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth", starring Paul Newman and Geraldine Page. Her role as Heavenly Finley could have made her a film star, but Shirley Knight was given the role in the film version.
In the early 1960s, Hyland focused on television, with strong roles on soap operas such as "Young Dr. Malone" and "Peyton Place", as well as guest appearances on shows like "The Twilight Zone", "The Fugitive", "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour", and "Alcoa Premiere". She was a sought-after presence on medical shows, appearing in popular tearjerkers like "Ben Casey", "Dr. Kildare", "Marcus Welby, M.D.", "The Doctors", "The Doctors and the Nurses", and "Medical Center".
Hyland made few films, but her best showcase was as the unconventional minister's wife opposite Don Murray's Rev. Norman Vincent Peale in "One Man's Way" (1964). She also co-starred with Fess Parker in the western yarn "Smoky" (1966). In the 1970s, she continued to brighten up television with an emphasis on crime dramas like "Kojak", "Harry O", "Cannon", "Mannix", and others.
In 1969, Hyland married actor Joseph Goodson, with whom she had a son, Zachary Goodson, born in 1973. The couple eventually split, and Hyland began a May-December affair with actor John Travolta in 1976. The two met while appearing together in the TV-movie "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble". Around the same time, Hyland was cast as a sophisticated wealthy woman in the "Happy Days" episode "Fonzie's Old Lady".
Just as her career was taking off, Hyland was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. The cancer returned, and she died on March 27, 1977, at the age of 41, having shot just four episodes of her new series "Eight Is Enough". The show explained her character's absence as being "away", and when the series returned, it was revealed that her character had also died.
