Name Kathryn Doty | Role Actress | |
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Full Name Kathryn Elizabeth Hohn Occupation Actress, Novelist, Psychologist Years active 1939–1946, career as actress Children Hunter Beaumont, Mark Beaumont, Kristy Beaumont Movies Saboteur, Sky Raiders, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Unfinished Business Books Becoming the Mother of Me: A, A Long Year of Silence, Wild Orphan Similar People Hugh Beaumont, Kathryn Adams, Clem Bevans, Pedro de Cordoba, Gregory La Cava | ||
Kathryn Elizabeth Doty (née Hohn; July 15, 1920 – October 14, 2016), also known by her stage name Kathryn Adams or as Kathryn Adams Doty, was an American actress.
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Early years
The daughter of a Methodist minister, Dr. Chris G. Hohn, Doty was born in New Ulm, Minnesota. When she was 6, the family moved to Warrenton, Missouri, where her father was chaplain and executive secretary at an orphan's home. After she developed lung problems, she spent two years at a camp in Minnesota. As early as age 13, she took her father's place in the pulpit when he was sick. In a 1939 newspaper article, she recalled: "It was quite a radical thing, in that small town, for a little girl to conduct the church services and preach the sermon, but the congregation understood and were very kind to me."
Doty was a student at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, (where she sang in the a cappella choir) and worked as a catalog clerk at the headquarters of Montgomery Ward when an opportunity for an acting career arose. She competed in 1939 in the national finals of the Jesse L. Lasky radio contest, "Gateway to Hollywood", received a contract, and remained in California to begin a film career under the name of Kathryn Adams.
Film
Doty debuted on film in 5th Avenue Girl (1939). One of her most notable roles was as "Mrs. Brown", the young mother in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942). She co-starred in Sky Raiders (1941), a film serial from Universal and had the leading lady role in three Western films in which Johnny Mack Brown starred.
Personal life
She married fellow actor Hugh Beaumont in an Easter wedding, April 13, 1941, at Hollywood Congregational Church. They had three children: Hunter, Kristy, and Mark. After divorcing Beaumont in 1974, she married Fred Doty, and relocated to her native Minnesota. Fred Doty (1922 – 2011) died on January 8, 2011, aged 88.
She earned a master's degree in Educational Psychology and had a career as a psychologist, working at the Footlight's Child Guidance Clinic at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center and later in Minnesota after she moved back to her home state.
Writing
Adams Doty wrote two novels: A Long Year of Silence and Wild Orphan. A Long Year of Silence, set in New Ulm, Minnesota, during World War I, was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and winner of the 2005 Midwest Book Award. A third book, Becoming the Mother of Me, described her life growing up as a minister's daughter and her trip to Hollywood and her first marriage.
Writing as Kathryn Doty, she published short stories in Pocket, The Friend and various children's magazines.
Death
Adams died on October 14, 2016, aged 96.