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Actor:

Elinor Donahue

  • Born: Apr 19, 1937 in Tacomah WA
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '40s-'60s, '90s
  • Major Genres: Comedy
  • Career Highlights: Mulligan's Stew, Father Knows Best, Get a Life
  • First Major Screen Credit: Love Is Better Than Ever (1952)

Biography

Elinor Donahue's mother, a theatrical costumer, moonlighted as a department store saleswoman in order to pay for her daughter's dancing lessons. Appearing in dancing-chorus film roles from the age of five, Donahue was at one point a ballet-school classmate of future Fred Astaire partner Barrie Chase. Striking out on her own at 12, Donahue attained work as a Las Vegas showgirl at 14; the fact that she was underage was discreetly covered by her agent and her co-workers, who took a paternal interest in the impressionable young dancer's career. Breaking her ankle at 16, Donahue decided to forego dancing in favor of acting; she was almost immediately cast in the role of sensitive teenager Betty Anderson in the long-running (1954-60) sitcom Father Knows Best. It was the first of many TV stints for Donahue; over the next three decades she would appear as a regular on such series as The Andy Griffith Show, Many Happy Returns, The Odd Couple, Mulligan's Stew, Please Stand By and Doctor's Private Lives. She became a special favorite of writer/director Savage Steve Holland, who cast Donahue as the ditsy mother of a teen-aged secret agent on the 1987 Fox network series The New Adventures of Beans Baxter, and as the voice of a suburban mom who spends her waking hours trying to learn an indecipherable foreign language on Holland's cartoon series Eek! The Cat. This fey, eccentric quality was carried over into Donahue's performance as the eternally bathrobe-clad wife of Bob Elliot and mother of 30-year-old paperboy Chris Elliot on the 1990 Fox sitcom Get a Life. Donahue's film appearances have been less frequent; when she showed up in a cameo as a department store clerk in Gary Marshall's Pretty Women (1987), there was an audible appreciative sigh of recognition from movie audiences everywhere. Elinor Donahue was the wife of Columbia TV executive Harry Ackerman from 1961 to Ackerman's death in 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

 
 
Wikipedia: Elinor Donahue

Elinor Donahue (born April 19, 1937, in Tacoma, Washington) is an American actress.

She was born Mary Eleanor Donahue. Her mother, a theatrical costumer, moonlighted as a department store saleswoman in order to pay for her daughter's dancing lessons. Appearing in dancing-chorus film roles from the age of five, Donahue was at one point a ballet-school classmate of future Fred Astaire partner Barrie Chase.

She was a child actor working in vaudeville and had several bit parts in movies as a teenager, including "Love Is Better Than Ever" in 1952 starring a young Elizabeth Taylor. She achieved stardom for her role as the elder daughter, Betty, on the popular 1954 – 1960 television family series Father Knows Best. She also appeared in numerous other television shows as a guest actor including Star Trek (second-season episode "Metamorphosis") and in such motion pictures as 1990s Pretty Woman.

She has had roles on many TV shows, including Miriam Welby, Tony Randall's love interest on TV's The Odd Couple, and Hunnicut, the evil nurse on Days of Our Lives. Donahue was also featured in several episodes of The Andy Griffith Show as pharmacist Ellie Walker, even getting a mention in the famous opening credits. Walker was intended to be a love interest for Andy Taylor, but was dropped from the cast after Griffith and the producers decided they had no romantic chemistry, and appears only during the first season (1960-1961).

She played Gladys, the mother of Chris Peterson (Chris Elliott), on the cult sitcom Get A Life! (1990-1992), alongside Elliott's real-life father, comedian Bob Elliottt.

The widow of TV executive producer Harry Ackerman (he was 25 years her senior), whose list of credits included "Leave It to Beaver", "Bewitched", and "Gidget" and a mother of four sons, Elinor lives with her third husband, contractor Louis Genevrino (married since 1992), in California. In 1998 she published a memoir entitled "In the Kitchen with Elinor Donahue" in which she relived some of her memories of Hollywood along with providing more than 150 of her top-grade recipes.


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Actor. Copyright © 2006 All Media Guide, LLC. All rights reserved.  Read more
Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Elinor Donahue".  Read more

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