<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Following appearances on a 1952 episode of CBS\u2019 Lux Video Theatre<\/a> and in the Judy Garland-starring A Star Is Born<\/a> (1954), Chapin was hired for Father Knows Best<\/a> when she was 9.<\/p>\n She said she got the job in part because she bore a strong resemblance to one of star Robert Young<\/a>\u2019s four daughters, also named Kathy. (Norma Jean Nilsson<\/a> had played the part on the preceding NBC Radio<\/a> version.)<\/p>\n Chapin\u2019s older TV siblings were Betty \u201cPrincess\u201d Anderson (Elinor Donahue<\/a>) and James \u201cBud\u201d Anderson Jr. (Billy Gray<\/a>), and their mom was level-headed…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.imdb.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Lauren Chapin, who portrayed the precocious Kathy \u201cKitten\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2298918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[25538,31714,21751,22556,21993,22860,21912,21738,24141,22205,21913],"class_list":["post-2298917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-actors","tag-actresses","tag-celebrities","tag-directors","tag-films","tag-hollywood","tag-movies","tag-news","tag-stars","tag-television","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Lauren-Chapin-the-Youngest-Kid-on-\u2018Father-Knows-Best-Dies.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2298917"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2298919,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298917\/revisions\/2298919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2298918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2298917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2298917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2298917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}