Billy Chapin
| Billy Chapin | |
|---|---|
Chapin in The Night of the Hunter, 1955
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| Born |
William McClellan Chapin December 28, 1943 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Died | December 2, 2016 (aged 72) |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1944–1959 |
| Awards | 1951 New York Drama Critics Award for Three Wishes For Jamie (stage musical version) |
William McClellan "Billy" Chapin (December 28, 1943 – December 2, 2016) was an American child actor, known for a considerable number of screen and TV performances from 1943 to 1959 and best remembered for both his roles as the “diaper manager” Christie Cooper in the 1953 family feature The Kid from Left Field, starring Dan Dailey, Anne Bancroft and Lloyd Bridges and little John Harper in Charles Laughton's 1955 film noir classic The Night of the Hunter, opposite actors Robert Mitchum and Lillian Gish.
Chapin was the brother of former child actors Lauren Chapin, known as Kathy “Kitten” Anderson from the TV series Father Knows Best (1954–60) and Michael Chapin, another successful child performer of the 1940s and 1950s.
Born William McClellan Chapin on December 28, 1943, in Los Angeles, he was the second of three children of Roy Chapin, a bank manager, and Marquerite Alice Barringer, who later became a kind of personal coach for all of her children's acting careers. His sister Lauren later told about alcohol problems and sexual abuse in the troubled family.
Chapin debuted on the screen at the age of only a few weeks, uncredited as Baby Girl in Casanova Brown, 1944, starring Gary Cooper, and just five months later had another uncredited baby role in Marriage Is a Private Affair, starring Lana Turner. He had another bit role in The Cockeyed Miracle in 1946. He started acting professionally in 1951 in a supporting role in the Broadway stage musical Three Wishes for Jamie, which, while passably successful, toured the West Coast in the summer of the same year. After essential changes regarding dramatization of the play and replacements in the original West Coast cast, when the play moved to New York City in early 1952, it finally became a considerable success and earned him the N.Y. Drama Critics Award as the most promising young actor of the year.
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