make her most significant film appearance in the classic D.O.A., also in 1950. She made her third film of the year in the Red Skelton vehicle, Watch the Birdie (1951). About 19 years passed before she returned to the big screen. Britton portrayed the title role of the TV version of the Chic Young newspaper comic strip Blondie (1957), opposite Arthur Lake as her husband, Dagwood Bumstead. She reprised her role in Brigadoon in 1954, appeared in Annie Get Your Gun at the Santa Barbara Bowl, and then returned to Broadway to replace an ailing Janis Paige in Guys and Dolls. My Favorite Martian What is perhaps her signature role began in 1963 and lasted until 1966 when she appeared as the nosy and ditzy landlady, Mrs. Lorelei Brown, in My Favorite Martian. After the series ended, Britton appeared in the movies, If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium and Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came. Personal life and death Britton was married on April 8, 1943, in Texas, to Captain Arthur Steel after they met on a blind date arranged by one of her sisters. After the wedding, he was posted to Italy on active service while Britton remained working at home. They had a daughter, Katherine Lee (born September 8, 1946). After the war, Steel worked as an advertising executive and went on to manage the Gene Autry hotels (Steel and Autry were first cousins). As their daughter grew up, Britton worked mainly in West Coast theater. After performing on tour with Don Knotts in The Mind with the Dirty Man, Britton was admitted to Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, Illinois, where she died of brain cancer on June 17, 1974, aged 51. Filmography References External links 1923 births 1974 deaths American film actresses American musical theatre actresses American television actresses People from Arlington Heights, Illinois Deaths from brain cancer in the United States Actresses from Milwaukee University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee alumni 20th-century American actresses 20th-century American women singers 20th-century American singers