Donna Douglas, who played hillbilly bombshell Elly May Clampett on the baby-boomer-beloved 1960s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, has died. She was 82.
Her family confirmed Friday to the Baton Rouge paper, The Advocate, that she died New Year's Day at Baton Rouge General Hospital, near her home in Zachary, La. Other media outlets, including local TV station WAFB, also confirmed the death.
Her death leaves only one member of the show's original cast still alive: Max Baer Jr., who played Elly May's cousin, Jethro. He is 77.
"She was Elly May until the day she died," Baer told the website RumorFix. "When I saw her for autograph signings or other gatherings, she always dressed the same with pink or blue" and of course those signature pigtails."
He said he last saw Douglas in January 2013 for an autograph signing in Los Angeles. He said she had pancreatic cancer for the last months of her life.
"But she was a very private person — nothing like me." A friend told him Donna had a message for him: "Tell Maxie I thought I was going to get better."
Douglas, a former Miss Baton Rouge and Miss New Orleans, was born in 1933, in Pride, La., and lived in Zachary, near her only child, a son. She is survived by him, by grandchildren and other extended family members.
She attended a local Catholic high school, where she played softball and basketball, and was a member of the school's first graduating class.
But she'll always be known as Elly May — the tomboy-but-sweetly sexy blond Clampett daughter who never seemed to be aware of her effect on men, and who referred to their Beverly Hills mansion swimming pool as the "SEE-ment pond."
Douglas also will be remembered as co-starring opposite Elvis Presley in the 1966 film Frankie and Johnny.
The Beverly Hillbillies was a classic fish-out-of water comedy about a poor backwoods family transplanted to California after striking oil ("black gold" as the banjo-inflected theme song went) on their land.
Starring Buddy Ebsen as Jed Clampett (he died in 2003), the show ran for nine years on CBS, from 1962 to 1971. It consistently ranked in the top most-watched programs on TV during its run.
Boomers could sing the theme song by heart but even some non-boomers expressed appreciation on Twitter at the news of Douglas' death.
