Anne Whitfield passed away on February 15 in a Yakima, Washington, hospital. She made her film debut at the age of 15 in the 1954 Hollywood Christmas classic White Christmas and had a successful career in episodic TV throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. She was eighty-five.
The performer, whose TV credits range from Adam-12 and The Six Million Dollar Man to I Married Joan and Father Knows Best, experienced an “unexpected accident” while out for a stroll in her neighborhood, according to her relatives.
Her family remarked, “Her family had the gift to say goodbye and express love and gratitude, a gift we will always cherish—thanks to the kindness of neighbors who provided expert medical support.”
Who was Anne Whitfield?
Whitfield, who was four years old when she moved to Hollywood with her mother Frances Turner Whitfield, who served as the aspiring child performer’s agent and acting mentor, was born in Oxford, Mississippi, on August 27, 1938. Whitfield began making appearances on radio serial operas and The Phil Harris-Alice Faye Show by the age of seven.
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Michael Curtiz cast her in the musical film White Christmas, which also featured Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen, at the age of 15. Whitfield portrayed Dean Jagger’s Major General Thomas Waverly’s granddaughter, Susan Waverly.
“Annie was able to watch White Christmas with her family during the holidays in December, in observance of the film’s 70th anniversary,” her family writes.
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Whitfield appeared as a guest on dozens of television programs over the subsequent several decades, such as Kolchak: The Night Stalker, The Donna Reed Show, Bonanza, The Many Loves Of Dobie Gillis, One Step Beyond, 77 Sunset Strip, Perry Mason, Gunsmoke, Adam-12, and Kolchak: The Night Stalker.
At the age of forty, Whitfield, who had left Hollywood for Washington State in the 1970s, attended college once more to obtain a degree in communications. Subsequently, she assumed the role of a steward for clean water at the Department of Ecology for the State of Washington. In addition to this, she engaged in activism and community organizing to advocate for causes such as housing insecurity, transparency in political campaign financing, fair electoral systems, and climate change.
Seven grandchildren and daughters Julie Stevens and Allison Phillips, son Evan Schiller, and in-laws survive her. A life tribute is slated to take place on March 22.