Actress Lynn Hamilton (Sanford & Son, Generations) died on June 19. She was 95. Hamilton studied acting in Chicago, and made her Broadway debut in Only in America (1959). Her other Broadway shows included The Cool World, Face of a Hero, and Tambourines to Glory. She made her film debut in 1958’s Shadows, and through 2009 appeared in such films and TV shows as Room 22, Mannix, Longstreet, Buck and the Preacher, Lady Sings the Blues, Good Times, Days of Our Lives, The Golden Girls, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. Hamilton was also seen in Roots: The Next Generation, and as Verdie Foster on The Waltons, also costarring in Generations and Dangerous Women. But she is best remembered as Fred Sanford’s prudish fiancée Donna in 21 episodes of Sanford and Son (the character was so unpleasant—Lamont called her “the Barracuda”—that it’s a mystery to me what Fred saw in her). Hamilton was married to actor and writer Frank Jenkins from 1964 till his death in 2014.
