Beloved Hollywood actress from Fayetteville dies at 88

‘I loved playing Lou-Ann Poovie,’ Elizabeth MacRae Halsey once said of her portrayal of the late Jim Nabors’ girlfriend in the television sitcom “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” that brought the actress iconic fame.

Elizabeth MacRae Halsey acknowledges audience at The Crown Theatre after induction on April 21, 2023, into the Fayetteville Performing Arts Hall of Fame. (Photo by Tony Wooten)

She was the young woman with the southern charm who aspired to acting and would find her way from Fayetteville to New York City and Hollywood, and find fame to include an iconic character actress of renown.

She was Lou-Ann Poovie, who portrayed the girlfriend of Jim Nabors, star of “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” the television sitcom of the 1960s. She belonged to television fans who marveled at her character portrayals on telecasts includes beloved programs such as “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Route 66,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “The Fugitive” and “The Andy Griffith Show.”

She was Elizabeth “Betsy” MacRae, and she belonged to us.

“She had a wonderful life,” nephew Jim MacRae was saying Monday. “She was bright and articulate. She was still getting fan mail at Highland House.”

Elizabeth “Betsy” MacRae Halsey died peacefully Monday at Highland House Rehabilitation and Healthcare on Pamalee Drive.

She was 88.

“I can tell you that when she and her husband returned to Fayetteville, they were both a joy to be around,” says Mayon Weeks, who on April 21, 2023, inducted Elizabeth MacRae Halsey into the Fayetteville Performing Arts Hall of Fame at the Crown Theatre. “Elizabeth had the ‘X factor’ that is an important part of being a performer. She did ‘light up the room’ when she was present, and that theatrical presence was in full bloom when she starred in the play, ‘Picnic,’ at Cape Fear Regional Theatre. A warm and delightful person to be with, and an engaging performer in film and on stage. A treasured daughter of our Fayetteville community.”

Aspiring actress

Elizabeth Hendon MacRae was the second child born to the late Fayetteville lawyer and Cumberland County Superior Court Judge James MacRae and Dorothy Hendon MacRae in Columbia, South Carolina, and later grew up in the two-story home along Brook Street in Haymount.

She liked playing as a youngster in the nearby park, and later hanging out with friends including Nancy Cook, Betsy Reinecke, Virginia MacMillan, Kitty Rose Patton, Martha Jean Allen and Mary Lee Breece.

And she loved taking in movies at the old Haymount Theater, now home of Cape Fear Regional Theatre, and watching film stars such as Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Cornel Wilde and Clark Gable.

A graduate of Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland, a college-preparatory school for girls with an emphasis on the arts, the aspiring actress set out in 1956 for New York City in pursuit of her passion for an acting career.

She had honey-blonde hair.

She had those big blue eyes like the sky.

There was the engaging smile and the infectious personality, accented with the charm of a southern belle.

By 1958, Elizabeth MacRae landed her first role in the CBS network telecast of “The Verdict Is Yours” as a courtroom witness. She would do a “Naked City” stint in 1960, and by 1961, Elizabeth MacRae was a sought-after actress appearing in productions of “Maverick” along with James Garner; “77 Sunset Strip” with Efrem Zimbalist Jr.; “Dr. Kildare” with Richard Chamberlain; “Hawaiian Eye” with Robert Conrad, Connie Stevens and Troy Donahue; “The Untouchables” with Robert Stack; “Gunsmoke” with James Arness, Amanda Blake, Milburn Stone, Burt Reynolds and Ken Curtis; “Stoney Burke” with Jack Lord; “Burke’s Law” with Gene Barry; “Rawhide” with Clint Eastwood; “The Fugitive” with David Janssen; “The Virginian” with Lee J. Cobb, James Drury and Fayetteville’s Randy Boone; “I Dream of Jeannie” with Barbara Eden and Larry Hagman; “Bonanza” with Lorne Greene, Dan Blocker and Michael Landon; “The Andy Griffith Show” with Andy Griffith, Don Knotts, Ronnie Howard and Frances Bavier; and as the iconi girlfriend of Jim Nabors on “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.,” which aired from Sept. 25, 1964, to May 2, 1969.

“I loved him to pieces,” she told me when Nabors died at age 87 on Nov. 30, 2017.

Her motion picture career included “The Incredible Mr. Limpet” with Don Knotts and the Oscar-nominated drama “The Conversation,” directed by Francis Ford Coppola of “The Godfather” directorial fame, along with Gene Hackman.

“You had to love her in ‘The Conversation’ with Gene Hackman,” Paul Paschal wrote in an email Monday night after learning of Elizabeth MacRae Halsey’s death. “She was one of Fayetteville’s own who made it big.”

Elizabeth MacRae Halsey also had roles in soap operas including “General Hospital” from 1969 to 1970 and 1972 to 1973; “Days of Our Lives” in 1977; “Guiding Light” from 1983 to 1984; “Search for Tomorrow” in 1985; and “Another World” in 1988.

It was on the Desilu Studios’ Desilu Cahuenga sound stage and the RKO Forty Acres backlot in Hollywood, where “Gomer Pyle” was filmed, and where Ronnie Schell played the role of Duke and came to know the actress, who played the part of Gomer Pyle’s ditzy girlfriend.

“She was so great doing Lou-Ann Poovie,” Schell once told City View Today. “I’ve always loved her. She was down to earth. She was not uppity like some actresses. We did about five Gomers together… She and I got along so well.”

The two connected by telephone in the past two years.

“I think a lot of him,” Elizabeth MacRae said. “We didn’t have too many scenes together, but I got to know him more at Mayberry Days in Mount Airy. We used to go to Mayberry Days, and it was fun. Everybody from the show is gone now … producers, directors, Frank Sutton and Jim Nabors. He [Schell] said nobody could find me. We didn’t talk too long, but I brought him up to date.”

Schell told City View Today it was a telephone conversation he cherished.

“It was like we never parted,” he said. “We picked up right where we left off.”

‘… that’s how Lou-Ann Poovie was born’

Elizabeth MacRae Halsey said in March 2021 before being inducted into the Fayetteville Performing Arts Hall of Fame that she was interviewing with producer Aaron Ruben in Hollywood for another part when asked if she could mimic a southern accent.

“I said, ‘Well, actually I can,’ she recalled, “and that’s how Lou-Ann was born.”

She welcomed the role opposite Jim Nabors, who she was close to until his death.

“She was my alter-ego, and she lives inside me still,” she once told me. “I loved playing Lou-Ann Poovie.”

And playing the recurring part of April Clomley opposite Ken Curtis, aka Fetus Hagan, on “Gunsmoke.”

“Working with him, he was just great,” she said, as well as working with Gene Hackman, who became a two-time Oscar winner in 1972 and 1993. “I loved working with Francis Ford Coppola in ‘The Conversation.’ I loved it with Gene Hackman. Gene is an incredible actor because he never acts. We worked very similar. He would become the character and I would become my character. That’s to me what it’s all about. It’s about who you are working with.”

Elizabeth MacRae Halsey left her Hollywood career behind in 1989, returning to New York City to work at the Freedom Institute for those struggling with alcohol, substance abuse and mental health issues.

“She became certified as an alcohol and substance abuse counselor and spent many years offering help to those in need,” Mayon Weeks would remind us at Elizabeth MacRae Halsey’s induction into the Fayetteville Performing Arts Hall of Fame. “She is quoted as saying that was one of her accomplishments that she is most proud.”

Charles and Elizabeth Halsey moved to the North Carolina mountains before returning to Fayetteville, where her final stage performance was playing a schoolteacher in the 2002 production of “Picnic” at the Cape Fear Regional Theatre.

“It is sad to see these titans go, but we are all so much the better for them having been in our midst,” Mary Catherine Burke, artistic director at the theatre, said Monday when learning of the retired actress’s death. “Fayetteville is the birthplace of so much talent and humanity.”

Elizabeth MacRae Halsey also attended many Mayberry Days festivals in Mt. Airy each September with former cast members including Ronnie Schell at the Andy Griffith Theatre and Andy Griffith Museum, and greeting television sitcom fans.

“I’m sorry to hear of Elizabeth’s passing,” said Phil Barnard, one of those fans from Fayetteville. “She was such a sweet lady and will be dearly missed. It was always a joy to visit with her during Mayberry Days.”

Epilogue

Elizabeth MacRae Halsey would take her final curtain call on April 21, 2023, as the 33^rd inductee into the Fayetteville Performing Arts Hall of Fame.

“Such an honor,” she would say in a breaking and emotional voice before the induction. “I am overwhelmed with gratitude, and I thank you so much.”

Frail and fragile, Elizabeth MacRae Halsey knew life’s end was near.

“When Charles died, she went down quick,” nephew Jim MacRae says about Charles Halsey, her husband of 55 years and who died at age 96 on March 29. “It’s sad, but she has crossed the river. She had a wonderful life. The last few years were rough, but she is with my dad, who she adored, her father and mother, sister and husband. She lived a good life.”

She was Lou-Ann Poovie and belonged to her countless television fans.

And she was Elizabeth “Betsy” Henden MacRae Halsey, and Elizabeth MacRae Halsey belonged to us and was proud for all of us to know that she called Fayetteville home.

Bill Kirby Jr. can be reached at billkirby49@gmail.com or 910-624-1961

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