Elinor Donahue is best remembered for her important part in the American TV blockbuster sitcom “Father Knows Best,” but her career did not end with the program; she continued to shine both on and off the screen.

The 86-year-old Washington native most recently appeared as a guest star on the long-running soap series “The Young and the Restless.”

Elinor was a key character on “Father Knows Best” as the show’s oldest daughter, Betty ‘Princess’ Anderson, who represented a middle-class family enjoying an idyllic all-American existence in the Midwest.

The radio show debuted in 1949 and ran every Thursday until 1954. It was later taken up for television by CBS, with only actor Robert Young from the radio program, who played Dad Jim Anderson, remaining.

Elinor featured in “Crossroads” and the “George Burns and Gracie Allen Program” during her six years on the successful show, which was one of the top ten most-viewed American TV series at its peak.

Her schedule was tight, and she acknowledged once that she didn’t have time to watch the episode again.

“By the time we got home at night and ate our meal, we’d be getting ready to study our lines, go to bed, and wake up to do it all over again. “So I never saw the program,” she said to Closer.

Born in Tacoma in 1937, she soon became the household’s major provider when her career took off in her adolescence, playing in films such as Love is Better than Ever, starring Elizabeth Taylor, and Girls Town.

Because Elinor was still a child and lived in California, she always needed to have an adult on set with her. Because her father was unavailable and her mother worked full-time, her mother, Doris, quit her job.

Elinor went on to star in “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Dr. Kildare,” “Star Trek,” and “Mork & Mindy” after “Father Knows Best.”

In total, the 86-year-old screen legend has appeared in over 70 TV shows and films, including Winter Wonderland and Pretty Woman.

Elinor married her first husband when she was 19 years old, and she confessed that she anticipated that she would mature by marrying and having a child.

“I had just turned 19, and I was like a 13-year-old,” she said in an interview with Emmy TV Legends.

“I’d never had the opportunity to evolve into a true person; therefore, I was immature.” I’d had no friends in high school… “I thought if I ran away, got married, and had a baby, I’d be a grownup.”

So she decided to agree to the next person who asked, which turned out to be Richard Smith, the sound man on “Father Knows Best.”

“We went to see a movie, and when he murmured in my ear, ‘I love you and I’d want to marry you,’ I answered, ‘Okay,” and she laughed.

With him, she had her first son, Brian, and the couple split six years later, in 1961.

She married TV producer Harry Ackerman in 1962 and had three boys with him. He was 20 years her senior, and they were blissfully married for over 30 years until his death in 1991.

She married her third and current spouse, contractor Lou Genevrino, the following year.

For the last decade, she has been absent from our screens. For someone who never considered acting, she has had a productive and successful career.