Elizabeth MacRae, who played friends of Gomer Pyle and Festus Haggen on television and a woman who seduces Gene Hackman's surveillance expert in The conversation, has passed away. She was 88.
MacRae died Monday in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where she and her family grew up announced.
MacRae appeared as Lou-Ann Poovie in 15 episodes of the CBS comedy Gomer Pyle: USMC during the last three seasons (1966-69). She got a contract for just one episode, “The old sweet song of love,” on the Jim Nabors leading man, but impressed producers enough to stick around for more.
She previously portrayed April Clomley, the girlfriend of Deputy Marshal Festus (Ken Curtis), on CBS' Gun smoke in four terms 1962-64.
In The conversation (1974), written and directed by Francis Ford CoppolaMacRae played Meredith, who dances with Hackman's Harry Caul in his apartment, sleeps with him and then swipes one of his audio tapes. The actress was among the cast and crew who went to Cannes when the film was shown at the festival.
From left: Elizabeth MacRae, Jim Nabors and Carol Burnett in “Corporal Carol,” a 1967 episode of “Gomer Pyle.”
Courtesy of Everett Collection
Elizabeth Herndon MacRae was born on February 22, 1936 in Columbia, South Carolina, and raised in Fayetteville. Her father, James, was a lawyer who later became a judge in the Cumberland County Superior Court.
After graduating from Holton-Arms High School in Washington, MacRae traveled to Atlanta to audition for the role of Joan of Arc in Saint Joan (1957). She didn't get the part (Jean Seberg did), but director Otto Preminger told her she had “intuitive talent” and encouraged her to improve.
In New York she studied acting with Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghof Studio and drawing and painting at the Art Students League. “Dad gave me $100 and told me to come home when it was gone,” she once said. “But I got a job modeling within a week and started studying drama and speech to lose my Southern accent.”
MacRae was hired for episodes of shows like The judgment is yours, Appointment, Naked city, Route 66, Independent thinking person And The asphalt jungle before appearing in her first two films, Everything is Duckie And Love in a goldfish bowlin 1961.
She then appeared in the Kirk Douglas movie For love or money (1963), starred as a striptease artist in Wild is my love (1963) and was the voice of Ladyfish, the animated love interest of Don Knotts' character, op The incredible Mr. Limpet (1964).
MacRae arrived Gomer Pyle as Loo-Ann, an inept lounge singer from North Carolina.
She had “answered a call to read, and I very deliberately did not show a Southern accent,” she recalled in one Interview from 2015. “Director Lee Philips walked by. He knew me and came in and asked what his favorite “Southern belle” was like. The casting director asked me if I was from North Carolina and if I could do a Southern accent. Then he asked if I could sing. I said I couldn't do it. He told me I had the part.”
In 1967 Philips sent her on The Andy Griffith show episode 'Big Brother'.
MacRae also worked on several daytime soap operas during her career, including General Hospital, Days of our lives, Look for tomorrow, All my children, Guiding light And An other world.
Her resume also included guest spots Surf side 6, Sunset strip 77, Hawaiian eye, The untouchables, Dr. Kildare, Burke's law, Rawhide, The refugee, The Virginian, Mannix, Barnaby Jones And Rhoda.
After acting, she worked as a drug and alcohol counselor at the Freedom Institute in New York and then returned to Fayetteville in the late 1990s with her third husband, banker Charles Day Halsey Jr., whom she married in 1969. He died on March 29.
She was married to Nedrick Young, a blacklisted actor and writer who co-wrote Jailhouse Rock And Inherit the wind and shared an Oscar for the screenplay for The challenging people – from 1965 until his death from heart disease in 1968.
Survivors include her stepchildren, Terry, Peter, Hugh, Cate and Alex.
Donations in her memory can be made to the Fayetteville Animal Shelter Association or Episcopal Church of St. John.