Whitney Blake

Eagle Rock, California, USA

Biography

​From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Whitney Blake (February 20, 1926 — September 28, 2002) was an American film and television actress, director and producer. Blake was born as Nancy Ann Whitney in 1926 in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California, the first child of Martha Mae Wilkensen and Harry Whitney. Her childhood was spent traveling across the country with her family, attending 16 different schools. Attending Pasadena City College, Blake worked in small-theater groups in the Los Angeles area, and in the summer, worked at her mother's ice cream stand in MacMinneville, Oregon. After her appearance in an amateur Hollywood production of "The Women" caught the attention of talent scouts, she appeared on a number of television programs, including the syndicated Johnny Midnight, Sheriff of Cochise, and twice on Rod Cameron's State Trooper. In addition, she guest-starred on Mike Connors's Tightrope detective series, in the 1960 episode "High Bridge" of the NBC western series Overland Trail starring William Bendix and Doug McClure. She also appeared in the first episode of the syndicated western series Pony Express in the episode "The Good Samaritan". Her guest appearance in the short-lived series "The D.A.'s Man" garnered an Emmy nomination in 1959. Blake is best remembered for having portrayed Dorothy Baxter, an interior designer and the wife of George Baxter (Don DeFore), a lawyer, on the NBC sitcom Hazel (1961), starring Shirley Booth in the title role as a bossy maid. In the last season on CBS, DeFore and Blake left the series and were replaced by Ray Fulmer and Lynn Borden, respectively in the roles of Steve and Barbara Baxter, the younger brother and sister-in-law of George Baxter. After Hazel ended, she guest-starred in an episode of ABC's western series The Legend of Jesse James starring Christopher Jones in the title role. In 1967 she played attorney Lee Drake on The Andy Griffith Show. As demand for her in network television and films dwindled, Blake became a hostess of a Los Angeles television talk show. After that, Blake again reinvented herself and became a film and television director, producer, and writer. Blake guest starred as "Angie" in "Incident of the Curious Street" in Series 1 Episode 13 of Rawhide, and played leading lady to James Garner in "The Day They Hanged Bret Maverick," the 1958 second season opener for Maverick. She appeared on the first episode of the long running television program Perry Mason as the defendant Evelyn Bagby (and at least one later episode), and appeared in the first film version of a Mike Hammer novel when she starred in My Gun Is Quick in the 1950s. Description above from the Wikipedia article Whitney Blake, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Movies

The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised on CBS between October 3, 1960 and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays the widowed sheriff of the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina. His life is complicated by an inept, but well-meaning deputy, Barney Fife, a spinster aunt and housekeeper, Aunt Bee, and a precocious young son, Opie. Local ne'er-do-wells, bumbling pals, and temperamental girlfriends further complicate his life. Andy Griffith stated in a Today Show interview, with respect to the time period of the show: "Well, though we never said it, and though it was shot in the '60s, it had a feeling of the '30s. It was when we were doing it, of a time gone by." The series never placed lower than seventh in the Nielsen ratings and ended its final season at number one. It has been ranked by TV Guide as the 9th-best show in American television history. Though neither Griffith nor the show won awards during its eight-season run, series co-stars Knotts and Bavier accumulated a combined total of six Emmy Awards. The show, a semi-spin-off from an episode of The Danny Thomas Show titled "Danny Meets Andy Griffith", spawned its own spin-off series, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., a sequel series, Mayberry R.F.D., and a reunion telemovie, Return to Mayberry. The show's enduring popularity has generated a good deal of show-related merchandise. Reruns currently air on TV Land, and the complete series is available on DVD. All eight seasons are also now available by streaming video services such as Netflix.

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The Andy Griffith Show
1960