Elena Verdugo

Elena Verdugo, born April 25, 1925, in Paso Robles, California, of Spanish parentage, is an actress who began in films at the age of six in "Cavalier of the West" (1931). Her career in radio, television, and film spanned six decades.

She 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 at the age of fifty.

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. 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.

In the 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".

Verdugo was twice nominated for an Emmy Award in her performances as office assistant Consuelo Lopez in Robert Young's ABC series "Marcus Welby, M.D."

She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

External links

*imdb name|id=0893900
* [http://charliechanfamily.tripod.com/id118.html Elena Verdugo discusses the Internet in handwritten letter (5/2/02)]