Yvonne Lime, who starred alongside Michael Landon in I Was A Teenage Werewolf, recurred on Father Knows Best, had dozens of other screen credits and later devoted her life to philanthropy, died Friday. She was 90.
Childhelp, the nonprofit she co-founded in 1959 that is dedicated to the prevention and treatment of child abuse, announced her death but offered no details other that she “passed away peacefully.”
“We are blessed to share her legacy, and we’re grateful to have been part of her life,” a post on the group’s Facebook page reads in part. “As our hands and hearts find strength in our memories of Yvonne and her generous spirit, may all our hearts find comfort in the faith she treasured and the brilliant legacy of love she leaves behind.”
Born on April 7, 1935, in Glendale, CA, Lime’s screen career took off in 1956, when she guested on several TV series and landed a role opposite Burt Lancaster and Katharine Hepburn in the Depression-set 1956 drama The Rainmaker. That year she also started a multi-season recurring role as Dotty on Father Knows Best, the long-running sitcom starring Robert Young and Jane Wyatt. Lime appeared on more than a dozen episodes from Season 2-6 in 1956-59.
She appeared on more television shows the following year and also had probably her best known role, second-billed as the girlfriend of Landon’s title character in the popular sci-fi horror pic I Was a Teenage Werewolf. Around that time, Lime also had an unbilled role in Loving You, which was Elvis Presley‘s first major starring role.
Lime would get top billing in the 1958 bikers-vs.-car club pic Dragstrip Riot, which also starred Gary Clark, Fay Wray, Connie Francis and others, and also as the new girl in school in the movie High School Hellcats that same year. Her final big-screen role was a co-lead opposite her Hellcats co-star Brett Halsey in the 1958 car-racing drama Speed Crazy.
After that, Lime focused solely on TV work. Her lone series-regular role was on the NBC sitcom Happy, starring with Ronnie Burns as a young married couple who run a posh motel. Their infant son Happy who reacted to the goings-on with facial expressions and an off-camera voice. It ran for one season in 1960-61.
Throughout the 1960s, she guested on such popular series as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, The Andy Griffith Show, Gomer Pyle: USMC, Dragnet and My Three Sons.
In 1959, Lime co-founded International Orphans Inc, later renamed Childhelp, with Sara Buckner, whom she’d met while working on Ozzie & Harriet. The nonprofit grew into one of the world’s largest child abuse prevention and treatment organizations, In 2004, the co-founders published Silence Broken: Moving From a Loss of Innocence to a World of Healing and Love, which told the story of one little boy helped by their group. The book was developed into the 2005 Lifetime TV movie For the Love of a Child.
Lime married My Three Sons and Family Affair producer Don Fedderman in 1969 and later ran his Don Fedderson Productions. He died in 1994.
Information of survivors or a memorial service was not immediately available.
