August 28 - Nancy Kulp

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On this day, in 1921, Nancy Jane Kulp was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The only daughter of a traveling salesman and a teacher, Nancy and her family had moved to the Miami, Florida area by her mid-teens. She graduated from the Florida State College for Women (now known as Florida State University) with a degree in journalism in 1943 and went on to the University of Miami to get a Master’s in English and French. Her academics were interrupted in 1944 when she joined the female arm of the United States Naval Reserve during World War II. She rose to the rank of lieutenant junior grade before being honorably discharged in 1946, returning to school to finish her graduate degree. Nancy married Charles Dacus in 1951 and the couple moved to Hollywood, California where she became part of the publicity department at the MGM studio.

Nancy had barely begun her job at MGM when George Cukor, director of such classics as A Star is Born and My Fair Lady, convinced her that she should be in front of a camera rather than behind a desk. Within months, she made her big screen debut in George’s 1951 comedy The Model and the Marriage Broker. Over the next few years, Nancy appeared in seven more films, mostly comedies, including two more of George’s (The Marrying Kind and A Star Is Born) as well as high profile classics like Shane and Sabrina.  Although she popped up in more than two dozen films over the course of her career, Nancy, like so many character actors of the era, didn’t really shine until she found her way onto our television sets.

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Nancy made her debut on the small screen in 1954 in an episode of the anthology show Lux Video Theatre (they put the word video in there so you wouldn’t confuse it with radio version). By the following year, she was showing off her comedic talents as Pamela Livingstone, a recurring role on The Bob Cummings Show. During the next several years, she had guest appearances on dozens of shows, doing everything from I Love Lucy to Alfred Hitchcock Presents to Maverick. She again enjoyed recurring comedic roles on Our Miss Brooks and Date with the Angels (an early Betty White vehicle). And then, Nancy was lucky enough to discover some bubbling crude and cemented her place in television history.

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In 1962, when the producers of The Bob Cummings Show were putting together a new project, they fondly remembered working with Nancy and decided to cast her in a main role this time around. They cast her as Jane Hathaway, loyal secretary to greedy banker Milburn Drysdale and needed friend to the newly rich Clampett family, on The Beverly Hillbillies. Although technically a side character, Miss Jane appeared in nearly 90% of the shows 274 episodes and earned Nancy an Emmy nomination in 1967. She stuck with the lovelorn assistant right up until Hillbillies was abruptly cancelled in 1971, in spite of its high ratings. And she was one of only three original cast members to reprise their roles for Return of the Beverly Hillbillies, a mediocre-at-best made-for-television movie in 1981.

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Nancy has three entries in the annals of Disneyana. Her first, and most recognizable, came in 1961. She played the beleaguered Miss Grunecker, assistant to camp leader Miss Inch, in the Hayley Mills classic, The Parent Trap. A year later, she had a small role in the comedy Moon Pilot as a space flight nutritionist. Her third and final role with Disney (and her last film role altogether) required her voice only as she brought to life Frou-Frou, the horse that helps get rid of the evil butler Edgar, in The Aristocats.

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Nancy’s career began slowing down as the Seventies rolled on. She did nab recurring roles on The Brian Keith Show and Sanford and Son, as well as several guest spots on The Love Boat, but parts were becoming fewer and farther between. In 1980, Nancy made her Broadway debut stepping into the role of Aaronetta Gibbs in the play Morning’s at Seven. She spent several months with the production, finishing the run of the show in August 1981. For the rest of the decade, she made just a handful of television appearances with her final small screen role being a nun on an episode of the classic sci-fi show Quantum Leap.

As she was contemplating the end of her acting career, Nancy decided to dabble in politics. In 1984, she ran as a Democrat for the United States House of Representatives in Pennsylvania's Ninth District, her home at the time. She knew it was a long shot (the district had voted Republican for decades) but she went for it anyways. The experience was marred when Buddy Ebsen, her old co-star from The Beverly Hillbillies, actually volunteered to campaign for her opponent. She was soundly defeated, getting only slightly over a third of the vote. It was probably the exact same outcome whether or not Buddy participated but it caused a decided rift to form between the two. Buddy later claimed to feel terrible about what he did to Nancy and they sort of made up before her death, but the damage to their relationship had definitely been done. 

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Following her political loss, Nancy became an artist in residence for a while at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania and taught acting. She later moved to Palm Springs, California and became an active volunteer. In 1989, she admitted in an interview that she was a lesbian, sort of. Her marriage had only lasted a decade, ending a year before The Beverly Hillbillies started. When the interviewer, Boze Hadleigh, went to ask about her sexuality since then, she basically said "The question you're looking to ask is do opposites attract? My answer is that I think birds of a feather flock together." It was the late Eighties and that's about as close to coming out that most celebrities could do at the time. Nowadays, I'm pretty sure she would have been a leader in the LGBTQ community. Timing is everything.

In 1980, Nancy was diagnosed with cancer and underwent treatment for it. Unfortunately, by the beginning of the following year, the disease had spread. On February 3, 1981, it overtook her and the comedienne with the masters degree passed away in Palm Desert, California. She was only 69.