Anyone who watched Family Affair would not have minded having a sister like Cissy, who proved time and again she could handle her siblings Buffy and Jody. Her actor, Kathy Garver, enjoyed unprecedented success thanks to the show and she has carried that momentum into present day. How so? Find out here.
Kathleen “Kathy” Marie Garver was born on December 13, 1945, and, between growing up in California and her mother’s own enthusiasm for the field, grew up surrounded by acting. In fact, by the time she was just Garver sang at the Meglin Studios, the same place where Shirley Temple was discovered; Garver feels her mother imagined a similar path to stardom for her own daughter. By nine, she landed a role in I’ll Cry Tomorrow and the following year a famous part as a slave in 1956’s The Ten Commandments. Initially, she was just supposed to be an extra, but just as Shirley Temple was discovered at that studio, Garver ended up discovered by the director and brought into the film proper.
Building from the ground up
The early years of her career were defined by sitcoms, Westerns, and dramas. As the ’50s progressed, radio and stage performances populated her resume. When she was just a freshman at UCLA, she was recruited on a trial run for Family Affair, a last-minute casting decision finalized right in the middle of filming the pilot. They changed because their original choice for the role had gained 15 pounds while on vacation.
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The work schedule was greatly demanding, Garver revealed, and could ask the cast to film “from as many as six different episodes in one day.” She went on, “I actually had to do most of my close-ups with the assistant director, a paunchy middle aged man glued to a cigar, standing behind the camera. I had to use a lot of imagination to perform with him playing my six-year-old sister, ‘Buffy!'” Because she was in a unique middle ground age, she did not spent much time with the rest of the cast, who were either much older or younger than her, but Garver has spoken about them as misfortune found her former colleagues over the years.
As for Garver herself, she went on to find new ways to carve up a spot for herself in entertainment history.
What happened to Kathy Garver?
By the ’70s and ’80s, Garver was still working; even if she was not seen, her voice was heard through voice work for Apollo 13, Jingle All the Way, and especially television shows, such as the Happy Days spinoff Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, and Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. She’s been working for 70 years, and 40 of those years have been spent married to business executive David Travis; together, they have a son in his thirties, Reid Garver Travis, who has pursued work that blends both of his parents’ professions.
As for Garver, she has further diversified her own resume by tapping into her unique experiences as an actor – and specifically, as a child actor. Today, Garver is 76 and still keeping busy. Those looking to cook up some sweet nostalgia, which fits all the more because scent is one of the biggest memory triggers out there, can consult Garver’s very own recipes with 2009’s The Family Affair Cookbook. For a glimpse into the life of a child actor and the process of making Family Affair, she also released Surviving Cissy: My Family Affair of Life in Hollywood. And, just as we’re revisiting the life of this former child actor, Garver penned X Child Stars: Where are They Now? in 2016. None of that is even counting her most recent on-screen job on To Tell the Truth, where she shared her best Dolly Parton impression. Have you read any of her books?