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Elen Willard is a retired American character actress who worked exclusively in various American network dramatic television series from 1960 to 1966. Her very first aired performance was a supporting role in a 1960 episode of the short-lived CBS detective series, Markham, which starred Ray Milland.
Successively, over a six-year period, Willard portrayed twenty-four characters in twenty different dramatic television series consisting of various featured guest star and supporting performances, including most notably , Outlaws, Perry Mason, Ben Casey, Dr. Kildare, Combat!, Gunsmoke, Whispering Smith, and Have Gun - Will Travel.
During just a mere collective five minutes of screen time, Willard may be best-known for her captivating, standout portrayal of the character Ione Sykes in the gothic-themed western episode of the science fiction/fantasy/horror anthology series The Twilight Zone entitled "The Grave", written, and directed by noted screenwriter, and director Montgomery Pittman. During the final two years of Willard's career she guest starred in four separate episodes of the ABC/Quinn Martin World War II based series Twelve O'Clock High.
Willard's last broadcast appearance was as a character that figured prominently in a Christmas-themed episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. entitled "The Jingle Bells Affair" which was initially aired December 23, 1966. Actor Earl Holliman, who guest starred opposite her in the second of her four appearances in Twelve O'Clock High, said in an interview for a book on that series published in 2005 that he had "... heard she had quit acting because it was such an emotionally painful experience for her."Allen T. Duffin and Paul Matheis, The 12 O'Clock High Logbook (Boalsburg, Pennsylvania: BearManor Media, 2005), p. 222.
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