DONAHUE RETURNS TO ‘50s AS TV MOM

In 1954, Elinor Donahue became a role model for a whole generation of young women. As the 17-year-old daughter Betty on “Father Knows Best,” the 1950s equivalent of “The Cosby Show,” Donahue was, in a way, a forerunner of the feminist movement. When Betty went off to college instead of getting married and settling down, parents everywhere began to think of sending their own daughters to college too.

Three decades later, Donahue has become a TV mom herself. In “The New Adventures of Beans Baxter,” a comedy-adventure series that started June 18 on the Fox Broadcasting Network, Donahue plays what she describes as “a kind of idealized 1950s mom who’s very into nurturing, cookies and lunches.

“But this isn’t like a ‘50s sitcom,” she hastens to add. “When I come home and the house is trashed, I don’t say cutely, ‘Oh, you made a mess.’ I play it very straight--like a real mother who does real things.”

In private life, Donahue has four sons whose ages range from 18 to 30. On the show, she has two--Beans, 17, and Scooter, 8. Beans (played by Jonathan Ward) is a high school student, but he’s also a spy-courier for The Network, a kind of postal service for the secret agencies of the U.S. government. Mom, of course, doesn’t know about Beans’ double life.

Donahue doesn’t see Mrs. Baxter as a grown-up version of “Father Knows Best’s” Betty. “Betty would have become an executive,” she says. “Betty was very positive about herself. In the two ‘Father Knows Best’ reunion movies we made 10 years ago, she was a buyer for Marshall Fields. If we made another movie now, she’d be an executive with that company.”

Mrs. Baxter isn’t a lawyer like “The Cosby Show’s” Claire Huxtable or an architect like “Family Ties’ ” Elyse Keaton. “Her joy in life is being a homemaker,” Donahue says. “It’s important for her to be there to give a sense of home, family and grounding.

“I don’t find that odd at all. Through my travels, I run into women like this all the time. In Lima, Ohio, for instance, I met wonderful, warm women who wear gingham aprons and shop in malls. They’re not hip and sophisticated.”

Donahue, 50, has had a crack at both life styles. A performer since the age of 2, she retired for 10 years in the middle of her career to be a mother and homemaker.

“I stopped working by choice at 29,” Donahue explains over coffee and doughnuts at her home. “I had plenty of offers, but I’d done just about everything and I wanted to have a home life. So in my 30s I had my childhood and caught all the childhood diseases. I got mono at 35. I went through my adolescence then and rebelled against my husband (producer Harry Ackerman).”

Rebellion far in the past, the Ackermans live on a tree-lined street in Studio City. Yet with the station wagon in the driveway, the friendly dog at the door and Donahue herself in sandals, red slacks and red-and-white-striped jersey, the setting could be Anywhere, U.S.A.

Donahue’s renewed career has come as a bit of a surprise to her. “I had no real thought of acting again,” she insists. “When my youngest son started nursery school, I thought I’d try commercials. At the time, one of my sidelines was shopping. I thought if I earned my own money, it would be guilt-free shopping.

“To get commercials, I had to find an agent. I remember calling one and saying, ‘This is Elinor Donahue,’ and the agent said, ‘Who are you trying to kid? She’s dead.’

“Eventually I got an agent, and in the first three months I did four national commercials. Then someone on ‘The Odd Couple’ asked if I’d mind doing a couple of lines in one episode. That turned into a recurring role (Miriam Welby).”

Guest-starring parts on various series, work in dinner theaters and a two-year stint on “Days of Our Lives” as the evil nurse Kate Honeycut led to “Beans Baxter.”

“I was scared to death when I went back to acting,” Donahue admits. “But I was back because I wanted to be, not because I had to be. When I was a little girl, my mother and I were partners in staying solvent. Working because I wanted to brought a new kind of fun to it.”

Donahue never had a real childhood. “My mother put me in a dance class when I was 18 months old,” she recalls. “By the time I was 2, I’d learned four dance routines and the dancing school put me on a Saturday morning kiddie broadcast.

“My sister’s husband’s father was a booking agent in the Pacific Northwest. He took a look at this amusing pipsqueak and put me on the Bert Levy Vaudeville Circuit.”

By the time she was 5, Donahue was a contract player for Universal Studios. She worked steadily until landing the “Father Knows Best” role when she was 17. A short-lived first marriage, a baby and then marriage to Ackerman led to her decision to retire at 29.

Now that she has returned to acting full-time, Donahue is eager to portray women her own age. “I’m not ashamed to be 50,” she says. “I don’t want to have to worry about having a face lift or cinching my waist.

“My goal is to be like Jane Wyatt.” Wyatt played her mother on “Father Knows Best.” “Jane has aged along with her roles, and that’s what I’d like to do.”