Betty McGuire, who appeared three times on Broadway and returned as the mother of Joanna Kerns’ Maggie Seaver on the ABC sitcom Growing painsdied. She was 100 years old.
McGuire died Oct. 8 of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, said close family friend Keith Gerchak, an actor and co-founder of Double G Films. The Hollywood Reporter.
McGuire played mother/grandmother Kate Malone in 12 episodes of Growing pains from 1986 to 1991, appearing in all but one of the comedy’s seven seasons. (Gordon Jump played her husband, Editor’s note)
In the 1978 films, she played Sister Mary Quacker in Cheech & Chong’s In smoke and a nurse in Michael Crichton’s medical thriller Comawith Geneviève Bujold.
Betty McGuire with her on-screen husband Gordon Jump on “Growing Pains.”
Courtesy of Keith Gerchak
Born March 20, 1926, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, McGuire performed and studied on Broadway alongside Ethel Merman, Barbara Cook, Bea Arthur and Tony Randall in the original productions of the musicals. Simple and fancy in 1955-56, Happy hunting in 1956-57 and Ah, Captain! in 1958.
She went on to play the role of Mame at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and around the world and performed in regional, national and/or Australian touring productions of Gypsy, Olivier!, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying And The Ziegfeld Follies of 1956. Her co-stars included Tallulah Bankhead, Celeste Holm, Susan Hayward, Constance Bennett, Jane Russell and Ron Moody.
During her 70-year career, McGuire could also be seen on The Doris Day Show, Canon, Columbo, Barnabas Jones, Barrette, Charlie’s Angels, Lou Grant, Hill Street Blues, Undeclared work, Saint-Ailleurs, Falcon Crest, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Murphy Brown, emergency And 7th Heaven and on the big screen in The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) and Master of Wishes (1997).
She also spent years volunteering as a receptionist and advocate for the Coalition for Economic Survival, a legal clinic that provides support to low-income tenants fighting eviction.
She has no survivors.
A resident of the MPTV house since 2017, McGuire has appeared on the NBC Evening News in a 2019 article describing his nursing home. She hosted and produced her own talk show, GabFestfor Channel 22, the campus television station, but instead of interviewing famous residents, she highlighted the dreams and life stories of the staff members who worked there.
“I’m a happy camper,” she said during the segment. “Having the chance to do new and different things at 92, can you think of anything better? I can’t.”
Betty McGuire
Courtesy of Keith Gerchak
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