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Joyce Bulifant

Perky, bubbly, and cute as a button, actress Joyce Bulifant started her entertainment career in small parts on TV Westerns. Her wholesome, apple-pie appearance lent itself easily to the roles of frontier and townswomen needed in the many oaters of early 1960s TV shows like "The Tall Man," "The Wide Country," "Gunsmoke," "Empire," "Wagon Train," and "The Virginian." She began to branch out later in the decade with recurring roles on the legal drama "Perry Mason" and "Dr. Kildare" and even landed the starring part of Mary on the one-season run of "Tom, Dick and Mary" in 1964. Her star rose in the early '70s with continuous work on the comedy series "The Bill Cosby Show" and as news writer Murray Slaughter's wife on the popular sitcom "Mary Tyler Moore." The rest of the decade saw her as a fixture on many popular game shows of the era: "Match Game," "$20,000 Pyramid," and "Password Plus." The 1980s started strong for Bulifant, after a memorable role in the spoof classic "Airplane" she landed a recurring role as the best friend of sassy waitress Polly Holiday on "Flo" but her career slowed down significantly after that, highlighted by guest parts in a handful of sitcoms and small roles in two Jenny McCarthy movies. Bulifant showed her tenderness offscreen working as a spokesperson for Childhelp, a charity devoted to the prevention of child abuse.