Elena Verdugo made numerous film appearances through the 1940s, including several Universal horror films. While filming the Abbott and Costello comedy Little Giant (1946), she met and married screenwriter Charles R. Marion, who also wrote for the comedy team’s radio show. Verdugo starred with Gene Autry and Stephen Dunne in the movie The Big Sombrero (1949). She had a small part as the orange girl smitten by Cyrano’s gallantry in the opening theater scene of the 1950 José Ferrer version of Cyrano de Bergerac. She co-starred in Thief of Damascus (1952) with Paul Henreid and John Sutton. Verdugo had a starring role as a singer in 1957’s Panama Sal, a musical comedy film. Elena Verdugo had a flair for comedy, and she garnered much laughter and applause in the title role of the hit situation comedy Meet Millie on both radio and television (1952-1956). She guest starred on The Bob Cummings Show in a 1958 episode entitled “Bob and the Ravishing Realtor”, playing the part of the realtor. In 1963, she played Gerry in the short-lived NBC half-hour Western dramatic series Redigo, actually the second season of Egan’s earlier hour-long Empire, in which she also played Gerry. Verdugo appeared as herself in 1963 on the NBC game show Your First Impression.

From February to June 1964, Elena Verdugo played Audrey, the widowed sister of Phil Silvers’ character of Harry Grafton, in Silvers’ CBS sitcom The New Phil Silvers Show. In the full 1964–1965 season, Verdugo played Lynn Hall, an employee of a complaint department at a Los Angeles department store in CBS’s Many Happy Returns. In 1965-1966, she played Alice in Mona McCluskey. She is perhaps best known for her role as office assistant/nurse Consuelo Lopez in Robert Young’s ABC series Marcus Welby, M.D., which ran from 1969 to 1976. Verdugo and Marion had one son, Richard Marion (1949-1999), who later became an actor/director. Her second husband was Charles Rosewall, who died in 2012. Elena Verdugo died on May 30, 2017 in Los Angeles at the age of 92.