Lauren Chapin, who portrayed the precocious Kathy “Kitten” Anderson on the iconic 1950s TV series Father Knows Best, has died. She was 80.
Chapin, who said she was molested as a child before dealing with drug abuse, jail sentences, several miscarriages and divorce after her show ended, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer, her son, Matthew, reported on Facebook.
Following appearances on a 1952 episode of CBS’ Lux Video Theatre and in the Judy Garland-starring A Star Is Born (1954), Chapin was hired for Father Knows Best when she was 9.
She said she got the job in part because she bore a strong resemblance to one of star Robert Young’s four daughters, also named Kathy. (Norma Jean Nilsson had played the part on the preceding NBC Radio version.)
Chapin’s older TV siblings were 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 played Jim Anderson, an insurance salesman.
Father Knows Best ran for six seasons, from October 1954 through May 1960, with two stints at CBS sandwiched around one at NBC. Reruns then aired for another couple of years in primetime on ABC and for decades in syndication, and the cast reunited for a pair of TV specials in 1977.
Chapin was born in Los Angeles on May 23, 1945. Her older brothers, Billy Chapin (The Night of the Hunter) and Michael Chapin (It’s a Wonderful Life), were child actors as well.
She was signed to a contract at Columbia Pictures and studied with choreographers Gower and Marge Champion and famed French mime Marcel Marceau.
Clockwise from top: Jane Wyatt, Lauren Chapin, Billy Gray, Elinor Donahue and Robert Young of ‘Father Knows Best.’
NBC/Photofest
When she was about 6, her mom, Marguerite, whom she said was an alcoholic, took her brother Billy to New York to build his stage career, and she was left with her father, William, whom she said molested her. By age 11, she said was a “manic depressive personality” and once attempted 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 during a 1989 appearance on Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee. “I didn’t understand how God could let me suffer.”
Five months after Father Knows Best ended, Chapin appeared on an installment of General Electric Theater alongside Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows, but that would mark her final acting appearance for 16 years.
She dropped out of Pasadena High School as a junior, and on the Regis and Kathie Lee program, she said got married at 16 and divorced at 18; another marriage was annulled after she discovered her husband was still married. Another man she was involved with turned her into a call girl and on to heroin, which she said she did for seven years until she was 25. Along the way, she lost eight children to miscarriages.
She said she also had to sue her mother to claim a portion of the money she had earned from Father Knows Best.
After achieving sobriety in the 1970, Chapin worked as a minister and as a talent manager; on her website, it was noted that actress Jennifer Love Hewitt “got her start in show biz” through Chapin.
She also published a memoir, 1989’s Father Does Know Best, and appeared on a 2016 YouTube series, School Bus Diaries.
Survivors also include her daughter, Summer.
“If I could be on television again, I would pray for a series like Father Knows Best,” she told People magazine in 1981, “one that has no violence, no sex and shows nothing but purity and love.”
