She achieved stardom for her role as the elder daughter, Betty, on the television family series Father Knows Best. Her co-stars were Robert Young, Jane Wyatt, Billy Gray, and Lauren Chapin.
Donahue has had roles on many television programs. She was a musical judge in ABC's Jukebox Jury (1953-54). In the first season of Father Knows Best she appeared on The Ray Bolger Show, starring Ray Bolger as a song-and-dance man.
She appeared in 1960 with Marion Ross in an episode (""Duet") of the crime drama series The Brothers Brannagan. She played Miriam Welby on ABC's The Odd Couple, Jane Mulligan on Mulligan's Stew, and Nurse Hunnicut on Days of our Lives. Donahue was featured in several episodes of CBS's The Andy Griffith Show as pharmacist Ellie Walker, even getting a mention in the famous opening credits. The character was intended to be a love interest for Andy Taylor, but after one season (1960–1961), Donahue decided to ask for a release from her three-year contract.
In 1964, Donahue appeared as Melanie in "The Secret in the Stone" in the NBC medical drama, The Eleventh Hour, starring Jack Ging and Ralph Bellamy. In the 1964-1965 season, Donahue costarred as Joan Randall, the daughter of Walter Burnley, played by John McGiver, on the CBS sitcom Many Happy Returns about the complaint department of a fictitious Los Angeles department store.
She guest appeared on Star Trek (in the second-season episode "Metamorphosis", 1967). She played Commissioner Nancy Hedford alongside Glenn Corbett as Zefram Cochrane, the inventor of the warp drive. She played Sister Bertrille's Sally Field's sister, Dr. Jennifer Ethrington, in three Flying Nun episodes (1968–1970). In 1978, Donahue starred in the NBC sitcom Please Stand By. In 1984, she made an appearance as Mrs. Broderick, the mother of a teenaged drug addict on the last season of Happy Days. In 1987 she played the title character's mother in the short lived Fox series The New Adventures of Beans Baxter. Donahue appeared on an episode of The Golden Girls as Stanley Zbornak's third wife Katherine (1989).
She played one of the daughters in Three Daring Daughters in 1948.
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Famous quotes containing the word father:
““You are old, Father William,” the young man cried,
“And life must be hastening away;
You are cheerful, and love to converse upon death:
Now tell me the reason, I pray.”
“I am cheerful, young man,” Father William replied;
“Let the cause thy attention engage;
In the days of my youth I remembered my God,
And He hath not forgotten my age.””
—Robert Southey (1774–1843)