Elizabeth MacRae
Elizabeth MacRae is an actor, born 1936.
Nine feature films and dozens of television episodes, almost all of them made between the late 1950s and the late 1980s: that is the shape of Elizabeth MacRae's working life, and it was a completely normal shape for an American actress of her generation. The studio contract was gone, the weekly guest slot had replaced it, and a performer built a career one episode at a time. MacRae did that on Route 66, on Surfside 6, and on the television version of The Asphalt Jungle.
The role that stuck was Lou-Ann Poovie, the nightclub singer she played on Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. during its 1964 to 1969 broadcast run. It is a sweet, slightly daffy part, and she kept it from curdling into pure novelty by playing Lou-Ann as somebody who genuinely believed in her own act, which is funnier and sadder than playing her as a joke.
Then came The Conversation in 1974, and the register changes completely. Nothing in the sitcom work predicts Meredith, and Coppola's film is the credit that keeps her name in circulation with people who have never seen a frame of Gomer Pyle. She also did the one thing that outlives everyone involved: a voice part, Ladyfish in The Incredible Mr. Limpet, which several generations of children have now heard without ever learning whose voice it was.
Movies (2)
TV (5)
Where to start with Elizabeth MacRae
Start with The Conversation, and not because it is the most famous title here. It is a film about surveillance in which nearly everyone speaks carefully, and MacRae's scenes work precisely because Meredith does not. Follow it with Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. for the opposite skill: a broad sitcom register that still lets a character be a person rather than a delivery system for punchlines.
After that the interest is archaeological, in a good way. Route 66 and Surfside 6 are the early-1960s guest circuit doing exactly what it did, and her episodes are a decent way to see how much a working actress had to be able to do on a week's notice. Petrocelli is later and stiffer. The Incredible Mr. Limpet is the odd one out, worth an hour if you have any patience at all for hand-drawn whimsy.