Joy Patricia Harmon was born in Flushing, New York. She and her family moved to Connecticut in 1946. A Miss Connecticut, Harmon was a contestant during the last season of Groucho Marx's television program You Bet Your Life (titled The Groucho Show during its last season), and later a regular on Marx's program Tell It to Groucho (credited as "Patty Harmon"). She guest-starred on several 1960s TV series, including Gidget, Batman, and The Monkees. She appeared in a cameo role as blonde Ardice in the Jack Lemmon comedy Under the Yum Yum Tree in 1963. She had a role as Tony Dow's girlfriend in the 1965–66 television soap opera, Never Too Young.
Harmon's best-remembered acting roles are as the thirty-foot-tall (9 m) Merrie in Village of the Giants (1965, in which she captures normal-sized Johnny Crawford and suspends him from her bikini top), and as the car-washing "Lucille" in Cool Hand Luke (1967) and her purportedly 41–22–36. measurements.
Harmon was married to film Editor and Producer Jeff Gourson from 1968 to 2001, raising three children. For a time, a son worked at Walt Disney Studios. She later established a bakery, Aunt Joy's Cakes, in Burbank, California.
