Elizabeth Mary Furness (January 3, 1916 – April 2, 1994) was an American actress, consumer advocate, and current affairs commentator. Early years Furness was born in Manhattan, the daughter of wealthy business executive George Choate Furness and his wife Florence. She attended the Brearley School and Bennett Junior College. Furness made her stage debut in the school holidays in the title role of Alice in Wonderland. She also posed for commercial advertising. She began her professional career as a model before being noticed by a talent scout and being signed to a film contract in 1932 by RKO Studios. Her first film role was as the "Thirteenth Woman" in the film Thirteen Women (1932) but her scenes were deleted before the film's release. Over the next few years, she appeared in several RKO films, and became a popular actress. Among her film successes were Magnificent Obsession (1935) and the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Swing Time (1936). By the end of the decade, she had appeared in over forty films, but during the 1940s, she found it difficult to secure acting roles. Career In 1948, Furness was performing in the television series Studio One, which was broadcast live. She filled in for an actor to promote Westinghouse products during the advertisement break, and impressed the company with her easy and professional manner. They offered her a contract to promote their products and she thus became closely associated with them. Early television commercials often utilized radio performers who had a difficult time adjusting to the visual medium of TV, leading to sometimes embarrassing incidents such as a Westinghouse commercial where a woman demonstrating an electric stove spilled hot chocolate all over it. Furness, due to her experience at Studio One, felt that she could do a better job. An advertising agency offered her a shot, and she found that she had a natural talent for commercials. Making $150 a week at first, Furness did three Westinghouse commercials (they were the sole sponsor of the show) for every episode of Studio One, all of them shot live as video tape did not yet exist. (One live spot featured a refrigerator door that refused to open, causing one of the most infamous bloopers in TV history; however, this was not Furness, but actress June Graham, who was substituting for her. For decades, Furness was "credited" for the blooper, until she set the