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American actress Elyse Knox started out as a fashion designer, eventually wearing many of her designs as a model for Vogue magazine. It was in this capacity that Elyse came to the attention of Hollywood, where she made her first film, Wake Up and Live, in 1937. She worked for 20th Century-Fox, Columbia and Hal Roach before settling at Universal in the '40s, where she appeared with everyone from Abbott and Costello to the Mummy (Lon Chaney Jr.). While her career was unremarkable, Elyse Knox's private life was touched with celebrity from all sides: she was the daughter of one-time Secretary of the Navy William Franklin Knox, the wife of football star/sportscaster Tom Harmon, the mother of actor Mark Harmon, the mother-in-law of singer Ricky Nelson, and the grandmother of actress Tracy Nelson.