Lauren Chapin, the youngest child in the series “Father Knows Best,” has died at the age of 80

Lauren Chapin, who played the precocious Cathy “Kitten” Anderson on the popular 1950s TV series Father knows bestHe died. She was 80 years old.

Chapin, who said she was molested as a child before dealing with drug abuse, prison sentences, several miscarriages and a divorce after her show ended, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer, her son, Matthew, said on Facebook.

After appearing in a 1952 episode of CBS. Lux Video Theater Starring Judy Garland A star is born (1954), two young men were hired Father knows best When she was nine years old.

She said she got the job in part because she looked so much like one of star Robert Young’s four daughters, also named Cathy. (Norma Jean Nelson played the role in the previous NBC Radio version.)

Chapin’s older television siblings were Betty “Princess” Anderson (Eleanor Donahue) and James “Bud” Anderson, Jr. (Billy Gray), and their mother was level-headed housewife Margaret Anderson (Jane White). Young played Jim Anderson, an insurance salesman.

Father knows best It ran for six seasons, from October 1954 until May 1960, with two stints at CBS sandwiched around one at NBC. Reruns were then broadcast for two more years in prime time on ABC and for decades in syndication, and the cast was reunited for a pair of television specials in 1977.

Chapin was born in Los Angeles on May 23, 1945. Her older siblings, Billy Chapin (Night Hunter) and Michael Chapin (It’s a wonderful life), they were child actors too.

She signed a contract at Columbia Pictures and studied with choreographers Gower and Marge Champion and the famous French mime Marcel Marceau.

When she was about six years old, her mother, Margaret, who she said was an alcoholic, took her brother Billy to New York to build his stage career, leaving her with her father, William, who she said molested her. At the age of 11, she said she was a “manic-depressive person” and once attempted suicide.

“It was very difficult to understand how Kathy Anderson could have been loved and protected and Lorraine Chapin lived such a completely different life,” she said during a 1989 appearance on the show. He lives! With Regis and Kathie Lee. “I didn’t understand how God could let me suffer.”

Five months later Father knows best Over, Chapin appeared in a movie segment General Electric Theater alongside Steve Allen and Jane Meadows, but this would be her last acting appearance for 16 years.

She dropped out of Pasadena High School when she was young, and in Regis and Kathie Lee She said the show 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 she turned to heroin, which she said she did for seven years until she was 25. Along the way, she lost eight children to miscarriage.

She said she also had to sue her mother to claim a portion of the money she earned Father knows best.

After achieving sobriety in 1970, Chapin worked as a minister and as a talent manager. On her website, it is noted that actress Jennifer Love Hewitt “got her start in show business” through two young men.

She also published her memoirs in 1989 Father knows bestShe appeared in a YouTube series in 2016. School Bus Diaries.

Survivors also include her daughter, Samar.

“If I could be on TV again, I would pray for a series like this Father knows bestshe said the people magazine in 1981, “A person in whom there is neither violence nor sex and who shows only purity and love.”