An American actor Ted Donaldson is no more among us. Ted Donaldson is well known for starring in the original radio version of Father Knows Best and the beloved family drama A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
According to The Hollywood Reporter Ted Donaldson’s friend Thomas Bruno told the news that Donaldson died on 1 March 2023 of complications from a fall in his Echo Park apartment in January at the age of 89.
Ted Donaldson never married and had no survivors. He was an only child born in Brooklyn on Aug. 20, 1933. His father was singer-composer Will Donaldson and his mother, Jo, died when he was just months old, his dad remarried Muriel Pollock.
Donaldson started his acting career in December 1937 when he first appeared in an NBC radio show but he got recognization after he played Bud, the son of Robert Young’s character in the radio version of Father Knows Best.
Ted Donaldson has done almost 20 films in his career including Once Upon a Time in 1944, Mr. Winkle Goes to War in 1944, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in 1945, A Guy, a Gal, and a Pal in 1945, Adventures of Rusty in 1945.
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In Memoriam: Remembering Ted Donaldson
Updated July 2026. Ted Donaldson passed away on March 1, 2023 at age 89, from complications following a fall at his Echo Park home. He was best known for voicing Bud Anderson on the radio version of Father Knows Best from 1949 to 1954 and for playing Neely Nelson in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Donaldson turned down the chance to reprise Bud Anderson on the television adaptation, saying he didn’t want to be typed as a teenager into adulthood, and instead stepped back from acting to teach classes and work at a Hollywood Boulevard bookstore. He is remembered by classic-film fans as part of a formative era of golden-age radio and film.
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