Joyce Audrey Botterill, known professionally as Judy Carne, was an English actress best remembered for the phrase "Sock it to me!" on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.
Career
Carne was born in Northampton, England. Her parents, Harold and Kathy, were greengrocers in Kingsthorpe. She received training at the Pitt-Draffen Academy of Dance before being accepted into the prestigious Bush-Davis Theatrical School for Girls in East Grinstead, near London. An instructor at the school began calling her "Judy", telling her that Joyce was not a good professional name. The second part of Judy's stage name was taken from a character named Sarat Carn in the play Bonaventure by English playwright Charlotte Hastings. She made her first British television appearances on the series Danger Man and episodes of The Rag Trade, a BBC sitcom. She moved to the US not long afterward. Her first regular role was in the sitcom Fair Exchange as an English teenager who goes to the US to live with an American couple whose daughter has gone to live in England. That was followed by The Baileys of Balboa. She later co-starred with Pete Duel in Love on a Rooftop. She made several appearances on the adventure series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. She had a small part in the ninth episode of the TV series Gidget, guest-starred as Jill in first-season episode 2, "Follow the Leader", and as Floy in second-season episode 3, "Then Came The Mighty Hunter", of 12 O'Clock High, and appeared in an episode of I Dream of Jeannie. She appeared in the Bonanza episode "A Question of Strength" as Sister Mary Kathleen and two episodes of The Big Valley and guest-starred in episode 11 of the first season of Alias Smith and Jones and the TV adaptation of QB VII. She had roles in the films A Pair of Briefs, The Americanization of Emily, All the Right Noises, and Rachel Amodeo's street movie What About Me opposite Richard Hell and Johnny Thunders. On Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In Carne gained stardom. Her most popular routine ended with her saying "Sock it to me!", at which point she was doused with water or assaulted in some other way. Carne was a regular in the first two seasons ; then, having decided the show had become "a big, bloody bore", made occasional guest appearances in the remaining 1969–70 seasons. Carne starred in a revival of the musical The Boy Friend which opened on Broadway on 14 April 1970 and ran for 111 performances. In 1993, Judy attended the 25th anniversary of Laugh-In and appeared on a televised Laugh-In Christmas show.
Personal life
Carne was married to actor Burt Reynolds from 1963 to 1965 and to producer Robert Bergmann from 1970 to 1971. Both marriages were brief and childless and ended in divorce. In 1978, after being found not guilty of possessing heroin, she was involved in a car accident along with her second husband; she recovered from a broken neck. Her drug problem continued and she was later arrested again for heroin possession. Her autobiography, Laughing on the Outside, Crying on the Inside: The Bittersweet Saga of the Sock-It-To-Me Girl, chronicled her difficulties with drugs, her failed marriage to Reynolds, and her bisexuality. Carne moved back to Northamptonshire, England, in the 1980s, living quietly in the village of Pitsford. She died from pneumonia on 3 September 2015 at a hospital in Northampton.
