There are some people who have been a part of our lives for many years, perhaps even decades. Aside from our family members and perhaps a few close friends, we also have those who have been a part of our television world as well.
One of those individuals is Eleanor Donahue. You probably know her as the daughter from the television sitcom, Father Knows Best. Aside from that role, she has also recently played on The Young and the Restless as a guest star.
Donahue is now 86 years old, and she played in one of the best known middle-class families that existed in the early 1950s. That show, which started on the radio in 1949 and lasted until 1954 was then picked up by CBS and continued to run on television.
When CBS started running the show, Robert Young was the only actor from the original radio show. He played Jim Anderson, as the father.
During the time that Eleanor was on the show, she was watched by people around the world every week. She was on the show for six years and it was considered to be in the top 10 American television shows at the time.
In talking about her experience on the show, she said: “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.”
In addition to starting on that show, she also appeared on The Andy Griffith Show, Dr. Killed There, Mork and Mindy, and Star Trek.
All in all, she has been on more than 70 different television shows and in some movies, including Pretty Woman and Winter Wonderland.
Eleanor was 19 years old when she married her first husband and felt that she would be a grown-up if she only got married and had a baby.
She said: “I had just turned 19 and I was like a 13-year-old 19
“I’d never had a chance to grow into a real person so I was not mature at all. I’d had no high school friends…I had this idea if I ran away and got married and had a baby I’d be a grown up.”
She did have a son Brian with her husband but they were divorced six years later in 1961. She then married a television producer, Harry Ackerman in 1962. They had three sons together and stayed married until he passed away in 1991.
The year after his death, she married a contractor, Lou Genevrino. They are still married today.