Elisabeth Fraser

Elisabeth Fraser, born Elisabeth Fraser Jonker on January 8, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York, was an American actress whose career spanned stage, film, and television across more than three decades. She was educated in Haiti, France, and New York before launching her professional life just six weeks after completing high school. Fraser died on May 5, 2005, in Woodland Hills, California, of congestive heart failure at the age of 85. Her ashes were scattered at sea.

Fraser's Broadway career began in 1940 with There Shall Be No Night, in which she was cast as the ingenue. The production went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for the 1940–1941 season. Her subsequent stage credits included the drama Winged Victory, Mr. Adam, The Tunnel of Love, Great Day in the Morning, Blood Sweat and Stanley Poole, The Best Man, The Family, and additional productions through 1962. She also appeared in the 1958 film adaptation of The Tunnel of Love, extending that stage credit into her screen work.

Fraser held a contract with Warner Brothers and appeared in dozens of films. Among her early screen roles was a part in The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which she played June Stanley, the young daughter of an Ohio couple compelled to host Monty Woolley's character, who encourages her to pursue a relationship with a trade unionist in her father's company despite her father's objections. Additional film appearances included All My Sons, Roseanna McCoy, So Big, and Ask Any Girl, in which she played Jeannie alongside Shirley MacLaine. Her most prominent film role came in the 1965 feature A Patch of Blue, where she played the friend of Shelley Winters' character.

On television, Fraser was a recurring presence across multiple series. She played Sgt. Bilko's longtime girlfriend Joan on The Phil Silvers Show, and held regular roles as Hazel Norris on Fibber McGee and Molly, Frances Warner on McKeever and the Colonel, Josie Ryan on Off We Go, and Mildred Hogan on One Happy Family. She made three guest appearances on Perry Mason, including the role of Estelle Paige in the 1966 episode "The Case of the Sausalito Sunrise," and four appearances on Maude. In 1966 she also appeared in the Gunsmoke episode "Which Doctor?" playing a character named Daisy Lou.

Fraser authored a book titled Once Upon a Dime, described by newspaper columnist Terry Vernon as a humorous account of a divorced actress with three children who arrives in Hollywood. Her papers, covering the years 1920 to 1999, are held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.