Actors - Mary Jane Croft

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	Actors - Mary Jane Croft

Mary Jane Croft (February 15, 1916 – August 24, 1999) was an American actress well-known for her association with Lucille Ball in Ball's best-known television series.

Croft was born in Muncie, Indiana. Prior to her involvement with Ball, she had worked heavily in radio and been a frequent guest star on other television programs. She was a regular on at least two series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Our Miss Brooks (reprising her radio role as Miss Enright, the title character's rival).

Late in the weekly run of the original I Love Lucy series, the major characters moved to Connecticut. There Lucy befriended a new neighbor, Betty Ramsey, who was portrayed by Croft. She was very socially-conscious and tended to get Lucy involved in a different sort of series of adventures than did Vivian Vance (as Ethel Mertz).

Vance's next role, Vivian Bagley, was subsequently downplayed in the later seasons of Ball's next series, The Lucy Show, when Ball's character relocated to California. Lucy's new sidekick, Mary Jane Lewis, was again played by Croft, who had previously been a recurring guest star (as Audrey Simmons) during the show's early, Danfield, N.Y.-based seasons. In fact, "Mary Jane Lewis" was Croft's legal name at the time, as she was then married to actor/producer Elliott Lewis but continued to use her maiden name professionally. (Her only son, by a prior marriage, was killed in the Vietnam War during the period that she was co-starring with Ball.) The Lewis character was maintained when The Lucy Show was transformed into Ball's third (and final successful) sitcom, Here's Lucy. The character remained until the cancellation of Here's Lucy in 1974.

Croft continued to act in television for several years after the end of Here's Lucy, and died of natural causes in Century City, California.

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