Nedra Volz

Nedra Volz (née Gordonier; June 18, 1908 – January 20, 2003) was an American actress. On television, she portrayed Aunt Iola on All in the Family, Adelaide Brubaker on Diff'rent Strokes, Emma Tisdale on The Dukes of Hazzard, and Winona Beck on Filthy Rich. Her film roles include Big Ed in Lust in the Dust (1985), Loretta Houk in Moving Violations (1985), and Lana in Earth Girls Are Easy (1988). Early life and career Born in Montrose, Iowa, she began her career as a toddler in the family tent show, billed as "Baby Nedra". The act continued until she was 11 years old and had outgrown the act's title. She unsuccessfully tried acting in high school, which led her to pursue music. In the early 1930s, Volz was featured vocalist with Cato's Vagabonds. In 1932, Volz and two other singers from Cato's orchestra performed as "Nedra, Paul, and Glenn" on WHAM radio in Rochester, New York. In 1940, Volz, described as a "blues songstress", was part of a vaudeville revue in Miami, Florida. Beginning with an episode of Good Times in 1975, she became a well-recognized supporting character actress, primarily on television but also in movies. Volz often played grandmothers or feisty little old ladies in 1970s sitcoms such as Alice, Maude and One Day at a Time, and she appeared in two of Norman Lear's summer television series: as Grandma Belle Durbin in A Year at the Top in 1977 and as Bill Macy's housekeeper Pinky Nolan in Hanging In in 1979. In 1978, Volz appeared in the pilot episode of the TV series WKRP in Cincinnati, where she whacked a turntable with her umbrella in protest of the station's format change, and in All In The Family as Edith's spinster relative and unwelcome visitor, Aunt Iola.