Dorothy Green (born Dorothy Jeanette Hufford; January 12, 1920 – May 8, 2008) was an American stage, film, and television actress. Her career spanned more than four decades, with her work principally being in supporting roles on many popular television series from the early 1950s into the 1980s.
Contents
Early life
Born in Los Angeles, California, in 1920, Green was raised in an upper middle-class family, the eldest child of Russell and Gladys Hufford. Her father, according to the federal census of 1930, was the owner of an automobile shop. That census also shows that she had two brothers by 1930, Warren and William, and that a "servant" resided full-time in the Huffords' home in Santa Monica, an indication of the family's somewhat elevated financial circumstances.
As a child and later as a young woman, Green had neither aspirations nor intentions to be an actress. She married for the first time in 1939, but that union soon ended. She married again in 1941, this time to a dentist, Dr. Sydney Green. They subsequently had three children, and by 1950, she seemed settled into an established family life, the traditional course for most wives and mothers at the time. One day, however, an incidental social contact at a local charity event changed the course of Green's life and destined her for a career in entertainment. In the coastal neighborhood of Pacific Palisades in western Los Angeles, while volunteering her time to model clothes in a fashion show to raise money for a charity, she impressed the wife of a local talent agent. The woman mentioned Green to her husband, who soon contacted her. The agent, too, was impressed with Green's beauty and poise, and he encouraged her to pursue acting. She initially hesitated to do so, but her husband encouraged her, as well, to give acting a try. She did, and after a few months of training with a drama coach, Green began performing on stage for the Manhattan Playhouse, a theater group located near her home in Manhattan Beach. Her first role was that of Irene in the group's production of Light Up the Sky by Moss Hart.
