‘Father Knows Best’ Actress Was 80

Lauren Chapin, who portrayed the precocious Kathy “Kitten” Anderson on the long-lasting Fifties TV collection Father Knows Bestyou’ve gotten died. She was 80.

Chapin, who stated she was molested as a baby earlier than coping with drug abuse, jail sentences, a number of miscarriages and divorce after her present ended, died Tuesday after a battle with most cancers, her son, Matthew, reported on Facebook.

Following appearances on a 1952 episode of CBS’ Lux Video Theater and within the Judy Garland-starring A Star Is Born (1954), Chapin was employed for Father Knows Best when she was 9.

She stated she acquired the job partly as a result of she bore a powerful resemblance to one among star Robert Young’s 4 daughters, additionally named Kathy. (Norma Jean Nilsson had performed the half on the previous NBC Radio model.)

(*80*) older TV siblings have been Betty “Princess” Anderson (Elinor Donahue) and James “Bud” Anderson Jr. (Billy Gray), and their mom was the level-headed homemaker Margaret Anderson (Jane Wyatt). Young performed Jim Anderson, an insurance coverage salesman.

Father Knows Best ran for six seasons, from October 1954 by way of May 1960, with two stints at CBS sandwiched round one at NBC. Reruns then aired for an additional couple of years in primetime on ABC and for many years in syndication, and the forged reunited for a pair of TV specials in 1977.

Chapin was born in Los Angeles on May 23, 1945. His older brothers, Billy Chapin (The Night of the Hunter) and Michael Chapin (It’s a Wonderful Life), have been little one actors as effectively.

She was signed to a contract at Columbia Pictures and studied with choreographers Gower and Marge Champion and well-known French mime Marcel Marceau.

When she was about 6, her mom, Marguerite, whom she stated was an alcoholic, took her brother Billy to New York to construct her stage profession, and she or he was left along with her father, William, whom she stated bothered her. By age 11, she stated she was a “manic depressive personality” and as soon as tried suicide.

“It was very difficult to understand how Kathy Anderson could be loved and protected and Lauren Chapin lived a whole different kind of life,” she said throughout a 1989 look on Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee. “I didn’t understand how God could let me suffer.”

Five months later Father Knows Best ended, Chapin appeared on an installment of General Electric Theater alongside Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, however that will mark her last performing look for 16 years.

She dropped out of Pasadena High School as a junior, and on the Regis and Kathie Lee program, she stated acquired married at 16 and divorced at 18; one other marriage was annulled after she found her husband was nonetheless married. Another man she was concerned with turned her right into a name lady and on to heroin, which she stated she did for seven years till she was 25. Along the best way, she misplaced eight youngsters to miscarriages.

She stated she additionally needed to Sue her mom to say a portion of the cash she had earned from Father Knows Best.

After reaching sobriety within the Nineteen Seventies, Chapin labored as a minister and as a expertise supervisor; On her web site, it was famous that actress Jennifer Love Hewitt “got her start in show biz” by way of Chapin.

She additionally revealed a memoir, 1989’s Father Does Know Bestand appeared on a 2016 YouTube collection, School Bus Diaries.

Survivors additionally embrace her daughter, Summer.

“If I could be on television again, I would pray for a series like Father Knows Best,” she advised People journal in 1981, “one that has no violence, no sex and shows nothing but purity and love.”