Joan Carlton (portrayed by Victoria Clark) is a New York Socialite and Billy Carlton's mother. She first appeared in Season 3, Episode 1.
Season 3[]
Episode 1[]
Joan attends the opera at the Met in Mamie Fish's box. Her son Billy is in the same box with Gladys Russell, whom he is secretly engaged to. Later, Joan attends Bertha Russell's meeting for the opera, and finds out, to her embarrassment, that Billy's and Gladys's engagement isn't public or accepted by Bertha, who bluntly turns her down, as Bertha has plans to marry her daughter off to the Duke of Buckingham.
Episode 2[]
At Aurora Fane’s gathering, Joan offers to start fresh with Bertha for the sake of their children’s engagement, but Bertha tells her that Billy will not marry Gladys. She tells Joan that if Gladys marries him, she will be disinherited, and Mr. Russell will blacklist Billy from getting a respectable job. Luckily for Joan, Billy loses his nerve and fails to talk to Mr. Russell about marrying Gladys. Joan praises her son for bowing out and encourages him to forget Gladys, in her effort to protect her and her family’s future from the influential wrath of the Russells.
Episode 3[]
Gladys sees Hector with another heiress after he previously rejected her father’s offer, and now thinks that she is free to marry Billy. She asks Larry to talk to him, but it is clear that his mother, still fearing retaliation from the Russells, refuses to let her son marry Gladys and risk everything.