Fraser, Elisabeth

Biographical notes:

Elisabeth Fraser, actress of the stage, screen and television, was born Elisabeth Fraser Jonker in Brooklyn, NY in 1920. Miss Fraser attended school in Haiti, France and New York, graduating from Washington Irving High School. As a result of her various travels she learned to speak several languages. She also spent a number of summers in Vermont performing in summer stock companies.

Elisabeth Fraser made her New York debut in 1940 in a production of Robert E. Sherwood's play There Shall Be No Night, produced by the Playwright's Company and the Theatre Guild and starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. She played the character of Kaatri Alquist, opposite Montgomery Clift. In the midst of the national tour of the production, Fraser went to Hollywood and completed a successful screen test. She made her screen debut in 1941 playing the character of Eileen Spence in One Foot in Heaven, which starred Frederic March.

For the next forty years she worked continuously on the stage, screen and television. Her best known appearance was as Sergeant Joan Hogan on the CBS television series The Phil Silvers Show, from 1955-1958. She also made guest appearances in numerous other television shows including Maude, The Monkees, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Rawhide, Perry Mason and Alfred Hitchcock Presents . Her stage and screen appearances include Winged Victory, The Tunnel of Love, The Best Man, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Commandos Strike at Dawn, Death of a Salesman, The Glass Bottom Boat, Seconds, The Way West, The Graduate and Nine to Five .

From the guide to the Elisabeth Fraser papers, 1920-1999, (The New York Public Library. Billy Rose Theatre Division.)

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