‘The Conversation’ actress Gomer Pyle was 88 years old

Elizabeth McRae, who played Gomer Pyle and Festus Hagen’s girlfriends on TV and the woman who seduces surveillance expert Gene Hackman in Conversation, He died. She was 88 years old.

Her family announced that McCray died on Monday in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where she grew up.

MacRae appeared as Lou-Ann Poovie in 15 episodes of the CBS comedy series Gomer Pyle: US Marine Corps During his last three seasons (1966-1969). She was only signed on to work on one episode, titled “Love’s Old Sweet Song”, starring Jim Nabors, but impressed the producers enough to go on to produce more.

Earlier, she played April Clumley, the girlfriend of Deputy Marshal Festus (Ken Curtis), on the CBS hit series. Gun smoke In four batches from 1962 to 1964.

in Conversation (1974), written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, McRae played Meredith, who dances with Hackman’s Harry Cole in his apartment, sleeps with him and then passes along one of his audio tapes. The actress was among the cast and crew who went to Cannes when the film was screened at the festival.

Elizabeth Herndon McCray was born on February 22, 1936, in Columbia, South Carolina, and grew up in Fayetteville. Her father, James, was an attorney who later became a judge of the Superior Court of Cumberland County.

After graduating from the college preparatory school Holton Arms in Washington, McRae traveled to Atlanta to audition for the role of Joan of Arc in Saint Joan (1957). She didn’t get the part (Jean Seberg got it), but director Otto Preminger told her she had “intuitive talent” and encouraged her to improve.

In New York, she studied acting with Uta Hagen at the Herbert Berghoff Studio and drawing and painting at the Art Students League. “My father gave me $100 and told me to come home when the money ran out,” she once said. “But I got a modeling job within a week and started studying drama and speech so I could lose my southern accent.”

MacRae was hired for episodes of such shows as The judgment is yours, an appointment, Naked city, Route 66, Maverick And Asphalt jungle Before appearing in her first two films, It’s all ducky And Love in a goldfish bowlin 1961.

Then she appeared in a Kirk Douglas film For love or money (1963), he starred as a striptease artist in Wild is my love (1963) and was the voice of Ladyfish, the animated love interest of Don Knotts’ character, in The amazing Mr. Limpet (1964).

McRae arrived Gomer Pyle Like Loo-Ann, an inept lounge singer from North Carolina.

She recalled in a 2015 interview that she “responded to an invitation to read, and I did not intentionally show any southern accent.” “Director Lee Phillips walked by. He knew me and came over and asked me what his favorite ‘Southern Belle’ was. The casting director asked me if I was from North Carolina and could I do a southern accent. He then asked if I could sing. I said I couldn’t.” He told me I had the role.”

In 1967, Philips directed her the The Andy Griffith Show “Big Brother” episode.

MacRae has also worked on several daytime television soap operas during her career, including… Public Hospital, Days of our lives, Searching for tomorrow, all of my children, Guidance light And Another world.

Her resume also included guest spots Surfside 6, 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian eye, The intangible, Dr. Kildare, Burke’s law, Rawhide, The fugitive, Virginian, Manix, Barnaby Jones And Rhoda.

After acting, she worked as a drug and alcohol counselor at the Freedom Institute in New York, then returned to Fayetteville in the late 1990s with her third husband, banker Charles Day Halsey Jr., whom she married in 1969. He died on March 29.

She was married to Nedrick Young, a blacklisted actor and writer whom she co-wrote Jailhouse Rock And Wind inheritance She shared an Oscar for the film’s screenplay Challengers – From 1965 until his death from heart disease in 1968.

Survivors include stepchildren Terry, Peter, Hugh, Kate and Alex.

Donations in her memory may be made to the Animal Protection Society of Fayetteville or St. John’s Episcopal Church.