Career
Born Sarah Hope Summers in Mattoon, Illinois, Summers was the daughter of John W. Summers and Jennie B. (Burks) Summers, and reared in Illinois and in Walla Walla, Washington. A regional actress who had often performed in one-woman shows, Summers was past fifty when she came to Hollywood to begin her career as a character player. She made her television debut in 1951 on the series Hawkins Falls, but it was not until the late 1950s when she kicked off a career as one of the most in-demand character performers on television.
Summers first attracted attention in 1958 in the semi-regular role as Hattie Denton on the western series The Rifleman, starring Chuck Connors. She guest starred on dozens of series including Wagon Train, State Trooper, Peter Gunn, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Hazel, Gunsmoke, The Danny Thomas Show, My Three Sons, Love on a Rooftop, The Pruitts of Southampton, The Second Hundred Years, Adam-12 and The Paul Lynde Show but will be forever known for her work as Clara Edwards, Aunt Bee's slightly gossipy best friend on The Andy Griffith Show. Summers made thirty-six appearances on the program during the 1960s (in earlier episodes her character was called Bertha) as well as five appearances on the post-Griffith spinoff, Mayberry R.F.D..
Her film work usually was in quite small parts, occasionally unbilled, but she had a good-sized role in the most un-Griffith-like Rosemary's Baby in 1968.
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Famous quotes containing the word career:
“Each of the professions means a prejudice. The necessity for a career forces every one to take sides. We live in the age of the overworked, and the under-educated; the age in which people are so industrious that they become absolutely stupid.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
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“It is a great many years since at the outset of my career I had to think seriously what life had to offer that was worth having. I came to the conclusion that the chief good for me was freedom to learn, think, and say what I pleased, when I pleased. I have acted on that conviction... and though strongly, and perhaps wisely, warned that I should probably come to grief, I am entirely satisfied with the results of the line of action I have adopted.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)