Best known as Elly May Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies, Donna Douglas was much like her best known character.

She was an animal lover from the time she was a small girl growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She won several beauty pageants, moved to New York in her teens, and became an actress in the late 1950s.

Another iconic role she took on early in her career was on one of The Twilight Zone's best-remembered episodes, "Eye of the Beholder," in which she played a woman undergoing surgery to cure her of "ugliness." The twist was that her natural beauty was considered ugly in the society where she lived.

After The Beverly Hillbillies was cancelled, Douglas often appeared at television and autograph conventions, frequently with Hillbillies co-star Max Baer.

Douglas died in Louisiana January 1, 2015.