Mary Grace Canfield, a classic television actress, has passed away the age of 89. She never gained a great amount of fame as many other actors did, but she had a long career of acting as a character actress on a variety of television shows.
The news of her death was reported from Mary Grace Canfield’s daughter, Phoebe Alexiades. She said that her mother died from lung cancer on Saturday, February 15th. Canfield was in a hospice in Santa Barbara, California, at the time of her death.
She is most most well-known to audiences in her role as Ralph Monroe in the popular series Green Acres. Monroe was a handy-woman, and would greet people in the town by announcing herself and saying “Howdy doody.”
On the series, Mary Grace Canfield’s character would dress in painters’ overalls and was forever working on the Douglas family’s bedroom with her brother, Alf. Green Acres was a show that centered on a New York attorney and his wife, chronicling their funny adventures as they begin a new life as farmers.
The two of them try to live as genteel farmers in the bizarre fictional community of Hooterville. The couple on the show, Oliver and Lisa Douglas, were played by Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor. It was a family comedy that ran for 30 minutes, and as a series, lasted for 170 episodes.
Canfield appeared in roughly 40 episodes of the show, and the series ran from 1965 until 1971. Throughout her career, Canfield acted in several shows, appearing in select shows over a career that last nearly four decades. Her career included episodes on the long-running General Hospital, as well as The Hathaways and one of the biggest shows of the 1960s, Bewitched.
Mary Grace Canfield will always be remembered by audiences as the cheerful character on Green Acres, and as an actress who appeared in several other classic television shows for brief time periods.
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