Elizabeth MacRae, who performed girlfriends of Gomer Pyle and Festus Haggen on tv and a girl who seduces Gene Hackman‘s surveillance knowledgeable in The Dialog, has died. She was 88.
MacRae died Monday in Fayetteville, North Carolina, the place she was raised, her household introduced.
MacRae confirmed up as Lou-Ann Poovie on 15 episodes of the CBS comedy Gomer Pyle: USMC throughout its closing three seasons (1966-69). She was signed to work only one episode, “Love’s Outdated Candy Tune,” on the Jim Nabors starrer however impressed producers sufficient to stay round for extra.
Earlier, she portrayed April Clomley, the girlfriend of deputy marshal Festus (Ken Curtis), on CBS’ Gunsmoke on 4 installments from 1962-64.
In The Dialog (1974), written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, MacRae performed Meredith, who dances with Hackman’s Harry Caul in his house, sleeps with him after which swipes certainly one of his audiotapes. The actress was among the many forged and crew who went to Cannes when the movie screened on the pageant.
From left: Elizabeth MacRae, Jim Nabors and Carol Burnett on “Corporal Carol,” a 1967 episode of ‘Gomer Pyle.’
Courtesy Everett Assortment
Elizabeth Herndon MacRae was born on Feb. 22, 1936, in Columbia, South Carolina, and grew up in Fayetteville. Her father, James, was an legal professional who later turned a Cumberland County Superior Courtroom decide.
After graduating from the college-prep faculty Holton-Arms in Washington, MacRae traveled to Atlanta to audition for the position of Joan of Arc in Saint Joan (1957). She didn’t get the half (Jean Seberg did), however director Otto Preminger advised her she had “intuitive expertise” and inspired her to enhance.
In New York, she studied appearing with Uta Hagen on the Herbert Berghof Studio and drawing and portray on the Artwork College students League. “Daddy gave me $100 and advised me to come back residence when it was gone,” she as soon as mentioned. “However I acquired a job modeling inside every week and began finding out drama and speech to lose my Southern accent.”
MacRae was employed for episodes of such reveals as The Verdict Is Yours, Rendezvous, Bare Metropolis, Route 66, Maverick and The Asphalt Jungle earlier than showing in her first two films, Every little thing’s Ducky and Love in a Goldfish Bowl, in 1961.
She then appeared within the Kirk Douglas movie For Love or Cash (1963), starred as a striptease artist in Wild Is My Love (1963) and was the voice of Ladyfish, the animated love curiosity of Don Knotts‘ character, in The Unbelievable Mr. Limpet (1964).
MacRae arrived on Gomer Pyle as Lavatory-Ann, a clumsy lounge singer from North Carolina.
She had “answered a name to learn, and I used to be very intentionally displaying no Southern accent,” she recalled in a 2015 interview. “Director Lee Philips walked by. He knew me and got here in and requested how his favourite ‘Southern belle’ was. The casting director requested me if I used to be from North Carolina and will I do a Southern accent. He subsequent requested If I might sing. I mentioned I couldn’t. He advised me I had the half.”
In 1967, Philips directed her on The Andy Griffith Present episode “Huge Brother.”
MacRae additionally labored on a number of daytime cleaning soap operas throughout her profession, amongst them Normal Hospital, Days of Our Lives, Seek for Tomorrow, All My Youngsters, Guiding Mild and One other World.
Her résumé additionally included visitor spots on Surfside 6, 77 Sundown Strip, Hawaiian Eye, The Untouchables, Dr. Kildare, Burke’s Regulation, Rawhide, The Fugitive, The Virginian, Mannix, Barnaby Jones and Rhoda.
After appearing, she served as a drug and alcohol counselor with the Freedom Institute in New York, then returned to Fayetteville within the late Nineties along with her third husband, banker Charles Day Halsey Jr., whom she wed in 1969. He died March 29.
She was married to Nedrick Younger — a blacklisted actor and author who co-wrote Jailhouse Rock and Inherit the Wind and shared an Oscar for the screenplay for The Defiant Ones — from 1965 till his loss of life from a coronary heart ailment in 1968.
Survivors embrace her stepchildren, Terry, Peter, Hugh, Cate and Alex.
Donations in her reminiscence may be made to the Fayetteville Animal Safety Society or St. John’s Episcopal Church.