World Courant
Anne Whitfield, who appeared at age 15 within the 1954 Hollywood chestnut White Christmas and went on to a prolific profession in episodic TV all through the Nineteen Fifties, ’60s and ’70s, died February 15 at a hospital in Yakima, Washington. She was 85.
The actor, whose TV credit stretch from I Married Joan and Father Is aware of Greatest by way of The Six Million Greenback Man and Adam-12, suffered what her household describes as an “sudden accident” throughout a stroll in her neighborhood.
“By means of the kindness of neighbors who supplied skilled medical help, the household had the present to say goodbye and categorical love and gratitude, a present we are going to all the time cherish,” her household mentioned.
Born August 27, 1938, in Oxford, Mississippi, Whitfield was 4 years outdated when she moved to Hollywood along with her mom Frances Turner Whitfield, who served because the aspiring little one performer’s agent and performing coach. By age 7 Whitfield was showing on such radio sequence as The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Present and radio cleaning soap One Man’s Household.
At 15 she was solid by director Michael Curtiz within the film musical White Christmas starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen. Whitfield performed Susan Waverly, the granddaughter of Dean Jagger’s Main Normal Thomas Waverly.
“Simply this previous December throughout the holidays, Annie was capable of watch White Christmas along with her household on the film’s seventieth anniversary,” her household writes.
Over the following a number of many years, Whitfield made visitor appearances on dozens of TV exhibits, together with The Donna Reed Present, Bonanza, The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis, One Step Past, 77 Sundown Strip, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Ironside, Adam-12 and Kolchak: The Evening Stalker.
After leaving Hollywood for Washington State within the Seventies, Whitfield, in her 40s, returned to school to earn a level in communications. She later labored as a steward for clear water on the Division of Ecology for the State of Washington, and served as an activist and group organizer to struggle local weather change, transparency in political marketing campaign financing, honest electoral programs, voter registration in swing states, and caring for the un-housed, amongst different causes.
She is survived by daughters Julie Stevens and Allison Phillips, son Evan Schiller, in-laws and 7 grandchildren. A celebration of life is scheduled for March 22.
