Elena Verdugo

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Elena Verdugo
Born: April 20, 1925 in Paso Robles, California, USA
Died: May 30, 2017 (age 92) in Los Angeles, California, USA
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0893900/?ref_=nv_sr_2


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Universal Pictures Promo For House Of Frankenstein (1944).

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[span4f]

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[babybreese]

1942

1952

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[cuzzyman927]

[Findcandor]

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I was collecting frames for another actress from a movie to dress up a post in the works, and suddenly this lady appeared:



Well, that was one smart looking woman, wouldn't you say? After learning that she was Elena Verdugo, I used my astounding mathematical skills to calculate her age happened to be forty-three-years-old at the time of the film in question (How Sweet It Is!, 1968). If Elena was such an eye-catcher at this middle-aged stage of life, no doubt she must have turned even more heads in her earlier years.



Was I in for a surprise when her screen credits included Universal monster movies from the 1940s. (Especially the classic House of Frankenstein. How do you like that.)


Elena Verdugo and Robert Young in Marcus Welby, M.D.

Not that Marcus Welby, M.D. was a favorite TV show for me, but of course I had seen episodes years ago, and turns out she was the chief nurse on that program which ran for nearly seven years beginning in 1969. (As usual, an actress you never heard of is one who has been watched on multiple occasions, but not every performer makes an indelible imprint.)



Allow me to present a few more grabs from How Sweet It Is! (and forgive the rotten quality). She plays good friend to Debbie Reynolds (who was surprisingly very sexy, in this movie), and gives the idea that photographer husband James Garner should go along with the kids to Europe, offering to get her own spouse to give Garner an assignment. (Adding that her husband does anything she says; "it's like being married to a jello mold.")



Debbie says no, preferring to persuade her husband in an honest fashion. When that idea does not work, all Verdugo has to do his hit her husband on the rear end with her book.



MEET MILLIE; dated: January 5, 1956.

Elena was evidently in a hit TV show that she starred in, as a secretary who lived with her mama and dated the boss's son, called Meet Millie; it lasted for four seasons, from 1952–1956. At first this was a radio series that Ms. Verdugo was a part of as well. The character apparently was a dumb blonde.


With actor/comedian Hal March, watching
Sammy Davis Jr's opening night at Ciro's
restaurant in West Hollywood, California,
around 1955.

When younger, her mainstay was feature films. According to her New York Times obituary (from June 7, 2017), she seems to have preferred concentrating on television later on. Her Hispanic surname led to much typecasting in Hollywood, where parts amounted to the likes of "Gypsy girls, Indian maidens, Mexican peasants, harem handmaidens and South Sea islanders." The article continued:



Celebrating Los Angeles' 178th birthday
on Sept. 3, 1959. Elena watches a man
named George Cairns decorate one of
two birthday cakes. She was apparently
named 'Miss Los Angeles,' at least for
the occasion. The Californian was born
three hours away by car to Los Angeles,
and 92 years later died in Los Angeles.

“With that name, they don’t call you up to do little American parts,” she was quoted as saying in “Women in Horror Films, 1940s” (1999) by Gregory William Mank. “They think you’re a black-eyed, dark-haired señorita — and I’m blond. So I put on my wig and tried to live up to what they thought ‘Spanish’ to be — or ‘Gypsy,’ or ‘native,’ or something.”

But she could do that for only so long, she said. “I quit the movies because I was sick and tired of playing a native girl of some kind, with a knife, and few clothes,” she told Pictorial Review in 1953.


As Henry Fonda's retirement send-off's co-
worker in THE ALPHA CAPER (1973), a TV
movie about Fonda unhappy with his job
as a parole officer not getting extended,
so he assembles a few ex-cons (including
Leonard Nimoy and Larry Hagman) to pull
off a multi-million dollar heist.

Ms. Verdugo would have done many of us a huge favor had she put on even fewer clothes (or preferably no clothes). Really! Would that have been so wrong?

Several accounts (one from a good friend of hers, actress Sharon Gless) testified what a wonderful sense of humor Elena had. A whiff of her upbeat personality is indicated in this interview she once gave, mainly focusing on her experience with westerns.


At home in Los Angeles, Feb. 2, 1956
(photo: Earl Leaf).









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