ELINOR DONAHUE

Elinor Donahue is an actress from the 1950s to the present. She started as a 16 month old tap dancer, and was signed to a movie contract by Universal at the age of 5 in 1942. She had only a few child roles, but then re-emerged as a juvenile in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She had a major break when she won the role of the oldest daughter, Betty, in TV's "Father Knows Best", and followed that as Andy Griffith's girlfriend Ellie on "The Andy Griffith Show", and then did more TV over the next couple of decades, spending time raising her four children, three of them by her second husband, a TV producer 24 years her senior. She has spent six decades in show business, and as of 2021, Elinor is still alive at the age of 84!