Betty McGuire, Actress on Broadway and ‘Growing Pains,’ Dies at 100

Betty McGuire, who appeared three times on Broadway and recurred as the mother of Joanna Kerns’ Maggie Seaver on the ABC sitcom Growing Pains, has died. She was 100.

McGuire died Oct. 8 of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, close family friend Keith Gerchak, an actor and co-founder of Double G Films, told The Hollywood Reporter.

McGuire portrayed the mom/grandmother Kate Malone on 12 episodes of Growing Pains from 1986-91, showing up in all but one of the comedy’s seven seasons. (Gordon Jump played her husband, Ed.)

In 1978 films, she portrayed Sister Mary Quacker in Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke and a nurse in the Michael Crichton medical thriller Coma, starring Geneviève Bujold.

Born on March 20, 1926, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, McGuire performed and understudied on Broadway alongside the likes of Ethel Merman, Barbara Cook, Bea Arthur and Tony Randall in the original productions of the musicals Plain and Fancy in 1955-56, Happy Hunting in 1956-57 and Oh, Captain! in 1958.

She later headlined as Mame at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and around the world and starred in regional, national and/or Australian touring productions of Gypsy, Oliver!, 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 also could be seen on The Doris Day Show, Cannon, Columbo, Barnaby Jones, Baretta, Charlie’s Angels, Lou Grant, Hill Street Blues, Moonlighting, St. Elsewhere, Falcon Crest, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Murphy Brown, ER and 7th Heaven and on the big screen in The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) and Wishmaster (1997).

She also spent years volunteering as a receptionist and advocate for the Coalition for Economic Survival, a legal clinic that offers support to low-income tenants fighting eviction.

She has no survivors.

A resident of the MPTV home since 2017, McGuire appeared on the NBC Nightly News in a 2019 piece that profiled her retirement home. She hosted and produced her own talk show, GabFest, for Channel 22, the on-campus TV station, but instead of interviewing celebrity residents, she highlighted the dreams and life stories of the staffers who worked there.

“I’m a happy camper,” she said during the segment. “To have the chance to do new things and different things at 92, can you think of anything better? I can’t.”