E.J. Peaker, Actress and Singer in ‘Hello, Dolly!’ and ‘That’s Life,’ Dies at 82

E.J. Peaker, who portrayed the chatty hat shop assistant, Minnie Fay, in Barbra Streisand’s Hello, Dolly! and starred with Robert Morse on the innovative but short-lived ABC musical comedy show That’s Life, has died. She was 82.

Peaker died May 16 of Alzheimer’s disease at her home in Las Vegas, her husband, pilot and musician Scott Rosen, told The Hollywood Reporter.

August 1968 was quite the whirlwind month for the blond, blue-eyed Peaker, who was finishing up on 20th Century Fox’s adaptation of Hello, Dolly! (1969) — her big-screen debut — while starting work on That’s Life, a Broadway-like hourlong show created by former Honeymooners writer-producer Marvin Marx.

That’s Life was usually taped before a live audience of about 1,600 people on Fridays inside the George Abbott Theater in Manhattan, but to accommodate Peaker’s busy schedule, the first three episodes were done in Hollywood on weekends until the actress wrapped up Hello, Dolly! on the Fox lot in L.A.

A big swing for ABC, That’s Life depicted the meeting, courtship, marriage and parenthood of Morse’s Robert Dickson, a junior executive at a chalk company, and Peaker’s Gloria Quigley, a salesgirl.

The critically admired show broke the fourth wall and featured, songs, dances, comedy sketches and lots of big-name guest stars but was not renewed after one 26-episode season.

The second of eight children, Edra Jeanne Peaker was born on Feb. 22, 1944, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her father, Donald, who owned oil wells and gold mines, and her mother, Augusta, a homemaker, brought the family to Pueblo, Colorado, and she appeared on a telethon when she was 5.

Pueblo “used to be a major steel producing city,” she told The New York Times in 1968. “They would tell us in high school what an important place it was because it would be the second city to be bombed when the country was attacked. That was when I started thinking about leaving.”

After graduating from Centennial High School, she attended the University of New Mexico and, on a scholarship, the University of Vienna, each for a year.

Back in the States, she landed a role in the road company of Bye Bye Birdie and then understudied for Elizabeth Ashley in the original production of Barefoot in the Park, which opened in 1963.

Peaker made her onscreen debut on a 1964 episode of Route 66 and signed a contract with Screen Gems, which put her to work on Occasional Wife, That Girl, The Flying Nun and The Second Hundred Years before her career caught fire in 1968.

She was chosen from more than 200 contenders to play the naïve Minnie, assistant to Marianne McAndrew’s Irene Molloy. (Sondra Lee had originated the role of Minnie on Broadway opposite Carol Channing as Dolly and Eileen Brennan as Irene.)

For The Jackie Gleason Show in 1956, Marx worked on musical episodes of The Honeymooners that had the Kramdens and the Nortons on a tour of Europe after winning a contest, and he thought a similar musical treatment would work for That’s Life. (Fun fact: The Abbott theater also was where the “classic 39” episodes of The Honeymooners were filmed.)

Morse was riding high after starring in the musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying on Broadway and the big screen, and he and Peaker — who reportedly beat out 150 other actresses for the job — appeared laughing on a cover of TV Guide in December 1968.

Kay Medford and Shelley Berman played Peaker’s onscreen parents, and guest stars included George Burns, Ethel Merman, Liza Minnelli, Rodney Dangerfield, Paul Lynde, Tony Randall, Alan King and Goldie Hawn.

After the demise of That’s Life, Peaker appeared on seven episodes of Love, American Style from 1969-73; performed “Walking Happy” and “It Must Be Him” on a 1970 Disneyland special for NBC that also featured the Osmond Brothers and Kurt Russell; and played a small-torn girl fighting with Anne Archer’s character for the attention of Jon Voight’s wayward boxer in The All-American Boy (1973).

Her TV résumé included installments of Good Morning World, The Odd Couple, Night Gallery, Banyon, Police Woman, Get Christie Love!, The Rockford Files, Barnaby Jones, The Streets of San Francisco, Quincy, M.E., Wonder Woman, Charlie’s Angels, The Greatest American Hero, Madame’s Place and Hunter.

She also appeared 17 times on The Tonight Show and on lots of game shows.

In one of her lasting acting gigs, she portrayed Natalie Schafer (Mrs. “Lovey” Howell) on the 2001 telefilm Surviving Gilligan’s Island: The Incredibly True Story of the Longest Three-Hour Tour in History.

In 1986, the Los Angeles Times wrote about her efforts to aid the homeless in Encino, and she, with the help of publicist David Mirisch, helped raise millions of dollars for charity over the years, her husband noted.

In addition to Rosen, whom she married about eight years ago, survivors include her son, David, and her siblings, Howard, Donna, Hannah and Donald. A memorial is set for Aug. 22 in Pueblo.

She also was married to screenwriter Bob Zampino from 1965 until their 1977 divorce and to accountant Steven Lee Salko from 1977 until his death in 2010.