NEW YORK — Donna Douglas, 82, who played the buxom tomboy Elly May Clampett on the hit 1960s sitcom “The Beverly Hillbillies,” has died.
Douglas died Thursday in Baton Rouge, La., near her hometown of Zachary. The cause of death was pancreatic cancer, said her niece, Charlene Smith.
Douglas was best known for her role in “The Beverly Hillbillies,” the CBS comedy about a backwoods Ozark family who moved to Beverly Hills after striking it rich from oil discovered on their land.
The series, which ran from 1962 to 1971, also starred the late Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan as well as Max Baer Jr., who turns 77 on Sunday.
As Elly May, she seemed blissfully unaware of her status as a bumpkin blond bombshell. Typically she was clad in a snug flannel shirt and tight jeans cinched with a rope belt, and she seemed to prefer her critters to any beau.
Douglas also starred in one of the most memorable episodes of Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” — titled “Eye of the Beholder.” It was the one in which her head is wrapped in bandages for most of the half-hour after plastic surgery aimed at fixing her “ugliness,” which in fact was beauty in a universe of monsters.
After “The Beverly Hillbillies,” Douglas worked in real estate, recorded country and gospel music and wrote a book for children that drew on biblical themes.
Douglas was married twice, to Roland John Bourgeois Jr. until 1954, and then to “The Beverly Hillbillies” director Robert M. Leeds until 1980. Survivors include her son, Danny P. Bourgeois.
