"Growing Pains" Actress Betty McGuire Dies at 100

Certain TV shows create families that mean so much to the audience that they feel like part of one's real family. More than one kid growing up in the '80s and '90s likely felt a connection to the Seaver family on Growing Pains.

Today, Variety reports that actress Betty McGuire has passed away at the age of 100. She died on October 8. McGuire is best known for playing Seaver family grandmother Kate Malone over the course of seven seasons on ABC's Growing Pains. Kate was the mother of Maggie Seaver, the mother of the family of main characters, played by Joanna Kerns.

McGuire began her television career in 1973 with an appearance on The Doris Day Show. While she would appear in movies, including the B-movie classic Switchblade Sisters and Cheech and Chong's Up in Smoke, she was a regular fixture on television, making appearances on everything from Columbo to Charlie's Angels to Little House on the Prairie. Growing Pains would become her most consistent television role. She appeared in 12 episodes over the course of the show's seven seasons, appearing in the first season episode "Be a Man" and appearing in the episode "Home Malone" during the show's final season. She would make appearances on other ABC series throughout the '80s and '90s, including Moonlighting, MacGyver, and Murder One.

Betty McGuire was a fixture on Broadway and in touring productions of Broadway shows as well. She performed or understudied in the original productions of Plain and Fancy, Happy Hunting, and Oh, Captain! where she performed alongside the likes of Bea Arthur, Tony Randall, and Ethel Merman. She starred in touring productions of classic shows like Gypsy, Oliver! and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Since 2017, Betty McGuire had been a resident of the Motion Picture & Television Fund Home, a retirement community exclusively for members of the entertainment industry. While there, she hosted her own talk show, called GabFest, where, instead of interviewing the home's various industry residents, she interviewed the staff who worked there.

Living to 100 is one of those things that most of us can only hope for, and from all the work that she did, including her talk show that she was doing in her 90s, she clearly led a full life. McGuire reportedly had no survivors, but those who watched her on TV will certainly remember her. Episodes of Growing Pains are currently available for free on YouTube.