Pat McDonald

{{Infobox person | name = Pat McDonald | image = Number96 25.jpg | caption = Pat McDonald pictured right with Bunney Brooke, in Number 96 | birth_name = Patricia Ethell McDonald | birth_date = | birth_place = Elwood, Victoria, Australia | death_date = | death_place = Royal North Shore Hospital | occupation = Actor | years_active = 1939–1989 | spouse = | children = | partner = Bunney Brooke | known for = Number 96, Sons and Daughters | awards = 4 Logie Awards (1 Gold 1974) }} Patricia Ethell McDonald (1 August 1921 – 10 March 1990) was an Australian radio actor and actor of stage and television and the daughter of one of Australia's most prominent electric radio engineers and public servants, Arthur Stephen McDonald and his wife, milliner Edith Roseina Ethell. Her grandfather, bootmaker John McDonald, was born in Victoria, and married Eliza Mary Stevenson. Although she was not the first female Gold Logie winner in Australia, which was entertainer and TV host Lorrae Desmond, she was the first female character actor to win for serial Number 96. Number 96 and Sons and Daughters McDonald was best-known for two long-running soap opera roles. She played comical malaproping gossip Dorrie Evans in the popular serial Number 96 between 1972 and 1977 and then played Aunty Fiona Thompson in Sons and Daughters between 1981 and 1987. She was featured in both shows throughout their entire run, about five and a half years in each case. McDonald won four Logie awards, including the 1974 Gold Logie, for her work on Number 96. Career McDonald was born in 1921, and at the age of 18 acted in the 1939 Australian film Seven Little Australians based on the novel by English children's literary writer Ethel Turner she played the twenty-year-old stepmother Esther. She much later appeared in an episode of the 1970 police drama The Long Arm. The role in Number 96 followed; she reprised the role in the 1974 feature film version of the series. McDonald won several Logie Awards as Best Actress for playing Dorrie, and a Gold Logie for Australia's most popular female personality in 1974. After Number 96 she played a regular role in the short-lived Australian situation comedy series The Tea Ladies (1978).