Elena Verdugo

Elena Verdugo

Verdugo in 1955
Born Elena Angela Verdugo
(1925-04-20) April 20, 1925
Paso Robles, California
Occupation Actress
Years active 1931-1985
Spouse(s) Charles R. Marion (1946-1955) (divorced) 1 child
Charles R. Rosewall (1972-2012, death)
Children Richard Marion (d. (1949-1999)

Elena Verdugo (born April 20, 1925[1]) is an American actress who began in films at the age of five in Cavalier of the West (1931). Her career in radio, television, and film spanned six decades.

Career

Verdugo made numerous film appearances through the 1940s, including several Universal horror films. While filming the Abbott and Costello comedy Little Giant (1946), she met and married screenwriter Charles R. Marion, who also wrote for the comedy team's radio show. The couple had one son, Richard Marion, who later became an actor/director. He died of a heart attack in 1999, aged 50. Her second husband was Charles Rosewall.

Verdugo starred with Gene Autry and Stephen Dunne in the movie The Big Sombrero (1949). She had a small but moving part as the orange girl smitten by Cyrano's gallantry in the opening theatre scene of the 1950 José Ferrer version of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Verdugo had a flair for comedy, and she garnered much laughter and applause in the title role of the hit situation comedy Meet Millie on both radio and live television of the early 1950s. She co-starred in Thief of Damascus (1952) with Paul Henreid and John Sutton. She guest starred on The Bob Cummings Show (Love That Bob) in a 1958 episode entitled "Bob and the Ravishing Realtor", playing the part of the realtor. In 1963, she co-starred with Richard Egan and Roger Davis in the short-lived NBC half-hour Western dramatic series Redigo, actually the second season of Egan's earlier hour-long Empire. The program was set on a New Mexico ranch during the early 1960s. Verdugo appeared as herself in 1963 on the NBC game show Your First Impression.

From February to June 1964, Verdugo played Audrey, the widowed sister of Phil Silvers' character of Harry Grafton, in Silvers' unsuccessful CBS sitcom The New Phil Silvers Show. Joining Verdugo on the program were Sandy Descher as her daughter, Susan, and Ronnie Dapo as Andy, Audrey's son.[2]

In the full 1964–1965 season, Verdugo played Lynn Hall, an employee of a complaint department at a fictitious Los Angeles department store in CBS's Many Happy Returns starring character actor John McGiver. Her costars were Elinor Donahue, earlier of Robert Young's Father Knows Best, and Mark Goddard, also of Lost in Space and Johnny Ringo.

She is perhaps best known for her role as office assistant/nurse Consuelo Lopez in Robert Young's ABC series Marcus Welby, M.D., which ran from 1969 to 1976. Verdugo was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her performances on this program.

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Selected filmography

References

  1. ↑ "Elena Verdugo". The New York Times. Retrieved May 1, 2014.
  2. ↑ Alex McNeil, Total Television, New York: Penguin Books, 1996, 4th ed., p. 598

External links

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