Movie lovers around the world have seen her face millions of times, but it's a safe bet they wouldn't know her name. Featuring in the logo Columbia Pictures has used since 1992, her image heralds the beginning of each of the production giant's films – a stoic look on her face, a blue bolt of fabric held across her body and a torch held aloft in one hand. She might be the 'Torch Lady' or Lady Columbia to us, but to those who know her she's Jenny Joseph – and becoming one of the world's most famous faces wasn't exactly in her plans.
READ MORE: Beloved Aussie chocolates set to double in price Joseph was working as a graphic artist at a New Orleans newspaper when she unwittingly became a movie icon. Her colleague, Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Kathy Anderson, was friends with illustrator Michael J Deas, who Columbia Pictures had asked to paint its new logo in 1991. The company wanted a fresh iteration of the 'Lady Columbia' motif that had featured in its logo since 1924.
Deas asked Anderson to shoot a reference photo for him, and mentioned he needed a model to pose for it. Anderson suggested her coworker, who agreed to take part in what would become her first and only modelling role. The portrait shoot took place during Joseph's lunch break, and she was styled in a bedsheet and held a lamp above her head.
There was a special surprise in store during the session, as Deas recalled to 4WWL . "At some point [Joseph] just started listing a bit and she very politely said, in her beautiful British accent, 'Do you mind if I sit down?'" he said. "And she sat on the edge of the dais and announced that she had just discovered that she was pregnant.
" READ MORE: 'Four months of hell': Huge challenge new mum didn't see coming Joseph, pictured in 2012, added: "Now my daughter is able to claim that she was there too." The reference photo formed the basis of Deas' famous painting, which is still Columbia Pictures' logo 31 years after it was unveiled in 1992. Joseph went on to become a muralist and lives in Houston.
In an intriguing twist, there was a little controversy around the identity of the woman in the Columbia logo years later, and it embroiled actress Annette Bening. In 2004, film critic Roger Ebert asked Bening about claims she had been the inspiration for the Torch Lady featured in the 1992 logo, and she confirmed she had been told this was the case. READ MORE: The drinking game that ousted Kate and Will's secret romance However, Deas quickly refuted this suggestion.
"I am troubled by recent claims by the actress Annette Bening that she was the inspiration for my painting. But I have never met Annette Bening, nor have I ever spoken to her," he told Ebert. "While Ms.
Bening is a talented actress, she was not the model for my Columbia Pictures lady." Deas continued: "The actual model is Jenny Joseph, a homemaker and mother of two children now living in the Houston area. She was an exceptionally gracious and unassuming model, and received very little compensation for her work in 1992.
"The face of the Columbia lady is perhaps one of the most famous in the world ...
and it happens to belong to Ms. Jenny Joseph.".
