Joan Van Ark
American actress (born 1943)
Joan Martha Van Ark (born June 16, 1943) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Valene Ewing on the primetime soap opera Knots Landing. A life member of The Actors Studio, she made her Broadway debut in 1966 in Barefoot in the Park. In 1971, she received a Theatre World Award and was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for the revival of The School for Wives.
In 1978, Van Ark landed her most famous role of Valene Ewing. The character first appeared on the CBS series Dallas, then was a leading character for 13 seasons on its spin-off Knots Landing (1979–92). For her performance on Knots Landing, she won the Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Actress in 1986 and 1989. She left the show in 1992, although she returned for the series' final two episodes in 1993 as well as the 1997 miniseries Knots Landing: Back to the Cul-de-Sac. In 1985, she received a Daytime Emmy Award nomination as host of the Tournament of Roses Parade on CBS. From 2004 to 2005, she starred in the soap opera The Young and the Restless. She reprised her role of Valene in an episode of the new Dallas series in 2013.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Joan Van Ark” as american actress (born 1943). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as american actress (born 1943). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q272007. VIAF identifies the subject as 67957688. The Library of Congress control number is n86143615. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1943, 1966, 1971 and 1978.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Joan Van Ark”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Joan Van Ark primary sources, Joan Van Ark archive and Joan research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Joan Van Ark” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.