GAIL BONNEY

December 15, 1901

Gail Bonney was born Goldie Bonowitz in Columbus, Ohio. She has a twin sister. Her screen career began in the late 1940s and continued for three decades. 

Her first screen credit came in January 1948 playing a gossipy woman (uncredited) in Slippy McGee.

Bonney was seen in two 1950 films featuring Lucille Ball.  In March 1950, she played an uncredited bicyclist in A Woman of Distinction in which Lucille Ball had a cameo as herself. In Spain the film was titled The Teacher’s Scandals. Gale Gordon also had an uncredited role in the film. 

Her first television appearance was on a 1951 episode of “The Stu Erwin Show” aka “Trouble With Father” on ABC.

In September 1950, Bonney was seen in the Lucille Ball film The Fuller Brush Girl. 

When Ball is mistaken for a babysitter and tied up by some children playing Cowboys and Indians, she is rescued by the real babysitter, played by actress Gail Bonney. 

Two years later, Gail Bonney played Mrs. Hudson in “The Amateur Hour,” (ILL S1;E14) hiring Lucy Riccardo to babysit her twin boys, who tie Lucy up while playing Cowboys and Indians.  The episode was filmed on December 7, 1951, and first aired on January 14, 1952. 

In 1955 Bonney did two episodes of “Our Miss Brooks” filmed at Desilu and featuring Eve Arden and Gale Gordon. 

Bonney played Madeline Schweitzer on Desilu’s “December Bride” for four episodes in 1955 and 1956. In February 20, 1956, Executive Producer Desi Arnaz played himself on an episode titled “The Sunken Den”.

Bonney did an episode of “The Westinghouse-Desilu Playhouse” titled “Six Guns for Donegan” in October 1959. Desi Arnaz was the on-screen host of the anthology series. 

She returned to Desilu to film an April 1961 episode of the short-lived series “Angel” that also featured Gale Gordon and Doris Singleton. 

That year she also played a nurse (uncredited) on the Desilu-hit crime drama “The Untouchables”. 

In October 1963 she did an episode of the Desilu show “Glynis” in which she played opposite vaudeville great Eddie Foy Jr.  It also featured Keith Andes, who played Lucy Carmichael’s boyfriend and her leading man on Broadway. 

She returned to do a 1965 episode of “The Lucy Show” titled “Lucy and The Ceramic Cat” (TLS S3;E16). Although she is listed in the closing credits, she has no dialogue and is not recognizable. It is possible that her lines were edited out of the final cut. 

In 1965 and again in 1970, Bonney was on the Desilu set of “My Three Sons” starring Fred MacMurray and in one episode Roy Roberts.

Speaking of ugly cats, Bonney (right) appeared as one of three witches in “Catspaw” a 1967 episode of Desilu’s now-iconic space series “Star Trek.” 

Bonney’s final appearance on a Lucy sitcom was in a 1968 episode of "Here’s Lucy” titled “Lucy and Eva Gabor” (HL S1;E7). Bonney played Dolores, a member of Lucy’s bridge club who visits specifically to meet Gabor.

Dolores asks Eva for her autograph – on a copy of The Caine Mutiny, the 1951 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel by Herman Wouk. Delores didn’t have Eva’s book at home so she grabbed something off of the shelf! 

Bonney, Benny, and Ball were all part of “Jack Benny’s Birthday Special” on February 17, 1969. Between 1957 and 1964, Bonney had appeared on half a dozen episodes of “The Jack Benny Program”. 

Unconnected to Desilu or Lucille Ball, Bonney appeared on all three of CBS’s rural sitcoms: “Petticoat Junction” (1965-66), “The Beverley Hillbillies” (1967), and “Green Acres” (1965) – all as different characters.

Like Lucille Ball, Bonney once worked with The Three Stooges. In 1958 she was seen in their short “Flying Saucer Daffy.” Ball had done a short film of theirs in 1934 titled “Three Little Pigskins”. 

Bonney’s final screen role was as a librarian on the Animal House-like “Delta House” TV series in February 1979. 

Bonney married Joseph Solomon in 1953. She died on December 7, 1984 at age 82.