Elinor Donahue star of ‘Father Knows Best’ and her six-decade screen career

Elinor Donahue is best known for her pivotal role in American TV hit sitcom “Father Knows Best”, but her career didn’t end when the show did, she went on to shine both on screen and off.

The Washington-born actress is now 86 years old and most recently had a guest role in long-running soap opera “The Young and the Restless”.

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As Betty ‘Princess’ Anderson on Father Knows Best, Elinor Donahue was a key figure in the beloved series that depicted a charming, all-American Midwest family. The show originally aired on radio from 1949 to 1954 before transitioning to television, where it continued with Robert Young reprising his role as dad Jim Anderson.

Throughout her six years on the hit show, which was a top-ten TV favorite at its peak, Elinor also made appearances on Crossroads and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. Despite her busy schedule, she once mentioned that she didn’t have the time to watch the show herself.

Elinor Donahue, reflecting on her time with Father Knows Best, shared with Closer, “By the time we’d get home at night and have our dinner, we’d be getting ready to learn our lines, go to sleep to get up and do it again. So, I never saw the show.”

Born in Tacoma in 1937, Elinor became the primary breadwinner for her family in her teenage years, appearing in films like Love Is Better Than Ever with Elizabeth Taylor and Girls Town. As a child actor in California, she needed an adult on set at all times. With her father absent and her mother working full-time, her mother, Doris, left her job to accompany her.

After Father Knows Best, Elinor continued her successful career with roles in The Andy Griffith Show, Dr. Kildare, Star Trek, and Mork & Mindy.

The 86-year-old screen legend, Elinor Donahue, has graced over 70 TV shows and appeared in films such as Winter Wonderland and Pretty Woman.

Married at just 19, Elinor admitted to Emmy TV Legends that she hoped marriage and motherhood would make her feel more grown-up. “I had just turned 19 and I was like a 13-year-old 19,” she said. “I’d never had a chance to grow into a real person, so I was not mature at all. I had no high school friends… I thought if I ran away and got married and had a baby, I’d be a grown-up.”

The man she married was Richard Smith, a sound man from Father Knows Best, the next person to ask her.

Elinor Donahue fondly recalled how her first husband, Richard Smith, proposed. “We had gone to see a movie, and afterward, he whispered in my ear, ‘I love you and I’d like to marry you,’ and I said, ‘Okay,’” she laughed. They had a son, Brian, but divorced six years later in 1961.

In 1962, Elinor married TV producer Harry Ackerman, who was 20 years her senior. They had three sons together and enjoyed nearly 30 years of marriage until his passing in 1991. The following year, she married her third husband, contractor Lou Genevrino. Elinor has been retired from acting for the past decade.