Donna Douglas played the charming, beloved character of Elly May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies. The nine years she spent on the show didn’t only lead to fame – but also brought her love and friendships for life.
From being a quiet southern girl to one of TV’s most recognizable faces, she did it all.
Donna Douglas was born Donna Ione Smith on September 26, 1932 in Pride, East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana.
As a kid, she had no interest or thoughts towards pursuing a career in acting. At St. Gerard Catholic High School she played softball and basketball, later went on to study at Rhema Bible Training Center in Oklahoma.
Donna Douglas
After Douglas had graduated high school, she planned on simply taking big steps towards adulthood. Speaking to the Lincoln Times News, she described herself as being both naive and idealistic at this time. She got married to Roland Bourgeois at age 16 and had a son, Danny P. Bourgeois, by age 21. However, Donna later divorced her husband and decided to start modeling and acting.
She was crowned “Miss Baton Rouge” and “Miss New Orleans” in 1957, which opened up a whole new world for her. On the back of that success, she decided to move to New York, landing her first gig in show business as a print-ad model for a toothpaste advertising.
Moving to New York was a huge thing for Donna Douglas. She came from a small community, one where big city lights and cars weren’t common.
“I had never been away from home,” she said. “I grew up poor. My parents didn’t have a car. I never had a background for show business.”
She recalled one specific moment before her flight to New York when a man at the airport in New Orleans asked if she wanted to change her reservation so that she could get to New York earlier.
“I didn’t even know they had two airports in New York,” she said laughing.
Moving to New York
Now, as we’ve mentioned, Donna never had any plans to become an actress. It just happened to be a decision she made that would lead to her into starring in a huge success series, The Beverly Hillbillies.
Beloved comedy show The Beverly Hillbillies followed the life of the Clampett family, with Jed Clampett, the family dad finding played by Buddy Ebsen, himself becoming insanely rich overnight.
In the show, when the fictional Jed suddenly earns millions in the oil business, he decides to move to Beverly Hills, California, along with his family. The problem is, he and his family still maintain the hillbilly way of living, turning the show into a comedy the likes of which had scarcely been seen before.
The Beverly Hillbillies aired for the first time in 1962, and it was a huge success. It rose to the No. 1 spot within three weeks of the first episode airing, according to IMDB; faster than any series in history.
The audience absolutely loved the show during the 11 years it ran. All told, there were a total of nine seasons and 274 episodes filmed before it was canceled in 1971.
The Beverly Hillbillies
The Beverly Hillbillies had plenty of great characters. Max Baer Jr played the role of Jethro Bodine, son of Jed’s cousin, Pearl, a naive and borderline dim-witted man who every time in a while showed off his great math skills.
Max became hugely popular in the role of Jethro, but that was also the case for Donna Douglas, who played the role of Elly May Clampett, the only child of Jed and Rose Ellen Clampett.
Sometimes in life, you just get the feeling that fate has brought everything together. This could be regarding love, work, or maybe something as simple as finding a parking spot across the street.
Well, in Donna Douglas’s case, she was surely in the right spot at the right time. The audition featured more than 500 girls vying to play Elly May. But Donna ended up being the one who got the role.
Just like her character in the show, Donna came from a poor southern place. In Donna’s case, it was Pride, Louisiana, and she felt at ease playing Elly May because of the resemblance the character’s situation had to her own childhood.
Donna Douglas – Elly May Clampett
During the audition, the CBS network actually asked her to milk a goat.
“I had milked cows before,” she recalled in an AP interview in 2009. “I figured they were equipped the same, so I just went on over and did it.”
The audition was an open-call one, and Douglas had traveled to the west coast of the U.S., to Hollywood, California, in order to attend. Her excitement over getting the judge’s attention was almost to bear, she recalled. She really wanted the part.
“I thought my heart was gonna pop wide ope,” she said. “All I could do was bob my head up and down.”
“I wanted my folks back home to be proud of what I did.”
The audition was a success. However, shortly afterwards, Donna will find herself involved in several unfortunate events.
