Come and Knock On Her Door.

The young woman you see to the right had trouble getting sex.

We should qualify this. It was in a TV role she couldn’t get sex. And the show aired a little more than 35 years after this picture was taken.

She made her motion picture debut in 1941 opposite Ronnie Reagan in Warner Bros.’ The Flight Patrol, but was on the New York stage by the end of the year. You know her best as Mrs. Roper.

Three’s Company was Audra Lindley’s biggest success and led to a spin-off series starring her and TV husband Norman Fell. It debuted in 1977, which proved to be a busy and not altogether banner year for her career, as we are reminded in this column from the Newspaper Enterprise Association, Aug. 25, 1977.

Actress Audra Lindley— A Hit Could Ruin Her Record
By DICK KLEINER
HOLLYWOOD — Audra Lindley could be in the Guinness Book of TV Records as the only lady who has been in three TV series on three different networks in one year — and they were all dropped.
But there's a problem. The last of the three shows is being brought back, that could spoil the whole thing.
Audra was part of the cast of NBC's Fay and CBS' Doc — without question, flops, at least judged from the standpoint of doing a quick fold. And then she began playing the wife of landlord Norman Fell on ABC's Three's Company.
That lasted six weeks earlier this spring. And that was that. Except the show astounded people, even ABC, by being in the top ten on four of those six weeks. So ABC, no slouch at recognizing a potential hit, is bringing it back. Audra says she has been told they'll make 22 more for next season, with an option for a few more after that.
ABC is going to pair it with a new show called Soap on Tuesday nights. Both of them are shows that are built on foundations of double entendres, so the network's obvious gambit is to make that Tuesday night slot a mild adventure in the risqué.
That's OK with Audra Lindley, who feels that it's far better to go in that direction than in the violent direction.
"I don't think Three's Company is sexy," she says. "There is certainly nothing lewd about it. It's just light and frothy and it has a very happy mood about it. It's like a slightly risque joke. Anyhow, I'd much rather there was sex than violence on TV."
Audra Lindley isn't exactly what you'd call an old-time TV fan. In fact, for many years, there wasn't a TV set in her household. That's when her five children were small, and she felt TV was bad for them.
Then when she got divorced, somehow a TV set became a symbol of revolt, a gesture of defiance, so she went out and bought one.
But she still wasn't a big fan. In fact, a few years after that first set entered her life, she was signed to do a play with James Whitmore. She says she knew him by reputation, but she had never seen him work.
"The play was a hunk of junk," she says.
But things worked out. Audra became Mrs. James Whitmore in 1971. Until that time, she had always called New York home, even though she had been born and raised in California. But she grew up deciding to be a stage actress and went to New York and stayed the through thick and thin, mostly thick.
But Whitmore doesn't like New York. He much prefers California. So Audra came to California with him and, being a woman who loves working, started looking for work. She was lucky and found it — she played the part of Bridget's mother on Bridget Loves Bernie. She says that series was spoiled when the producers got away from the original concept.
At the moment she's very high on Three's Company. She likes her part and the people she's working with and the prospects for the project.
Audra's childhood was a moving one. Her father was an actor. Her mother was an actress who gave up her career when she had the fourth of her five children.
"My father wasn't very successful as an actor," she says. "Once in a while, now, I'll see him on a late, late show — he played a trapper with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in 'Indian Love Call,' and that's on once in a while. "He kept moving every year selling a house and buying a new one, I guess he felt the new house would bring good luck, When he was 65, he became a make-up man and made more money than he ever made as an actor.
"But I think my mother lived vicariously in my career, because she'd given up her own. She helped me pack my bags when I went to New York."

Three’s Company lasted eight seasons, but Lindley and Fell were gone after only two years, given their own series. The Ropers died after 28 episodes. Reporter Kleiner caught up with Lindley afterward. In his column of July 15, 1981, she bluntly said the series was deliberately scuttled by ABC because someone at the network didn’t like it, and kept moving it around on the schedule every time it gained an audience.

She told Kleiner she didn’t want to go back to Three’s Company. Not that the show needed her. Don Knotts had been brought in to replace her and Fell, and the former Barney Fife was, as you might expect, a hit with viewers.

Her career didn’t end. She continued to work in theatre and television, appearing on as Cybill Shepherd’s mother on Cybill, taping an episode a month before she passed away in October 1997.

One of Lindley’s most interesting projects was a film distributed by B’Nai Brith in 1958. It was the tale of a teenage girl shunned by her friends and neighbours for her visible support of Jews. Patty Duke has a small role as a friend in this non-commercial film. You can see it below. This is far from the broad comedy of Mrs. Roper (this version of the print has no credits but was the cast was mentioned in various publications at the time).