[3] After a break from acting to raise five children, she began to make steady appearances on television in the early 1960s, including the role of Sue Knowles on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and a five-year stint as manipulative Aunt Liz Matthews on the soap opera Another World.

She had regular roles as Meredith Baxter's mother in the sitcom Bridget Loves Bernie as well as Lee Grant’s best friend in Fay.

[citation needed] Her greatest fame came when she began playing the wisecracking, perpetually unfulfilled and sexually frustrated Helen Roper on the hit sitcom Three’s Company (1977–79), in which she wore a wig to maintain her character's exaggerated hairstyle.

[4] The character and her husband Stanley, portrayed by Norman Fell, also starred in the spin-off series The Ropers (1979–80), which ran for two seasons.

[1] She was cremated and her ashes buried in a grave near her parents at Woodlawn Memorial Cemetery in Santa Monica, California.