She shared Broadway stages with Ethel Merman long before a generation of television viewers knew her as the grandmother on a Long Island sitcom.
Betty McGuire, the actress who played Maggie Seaver’s mother on “Growing Pains,” died of natural causes at 100 on Oct. 8, 2026, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. Keith Gerchak, an actor, co-founder of Double G Films, a close family friend and McGuire’s power of attorney, confirmed her death on Sunday, Oct. 18.
McGuire had lived at the facility, a retirement home for entertainment industry veterans, since 2017. She leaves no surviving family members.
Grandmother to the Seaver Children
Her role on the ABC sitcom was Kate Malone, mother of Joanna Kerns’ Maggie Seaver and grandmother to the Seaver children. She appeared in 12 episodes, beginning with the show’s first season and continuing into Season 7, turning up in seasons 1-2 and 4-7. Gordon Jump played her onscreen husband, Ed.
A Long Island family sat at the center of “Growing Pains,” which ABC aired from 1985 to 1992, and Kerns, Alan Thicke and Kirk Cameron carried the lead roles. In the final season, Leonardo DiCaprio joined the cast, turning up in more than 20 episodes.
A Talk Show on Channel 22
McGuire appeared on “NBC Nightly News” in 2019 in a piece profiling her retirement home. By then she was hosting and producing her own talk show on the campus, “GabFest,” broadcast on Channel 22, the closed-circuit station there. The program focused on the dreams and life stories of the staffers rather than the famous residents.
“I’m a happy camper,” she said in the segment. “To have the chance to do new things and different things at 92, can you think of anything better? I can’t,” she added.
She also volunteered as a receptionist and advocate with the Coalition for Economic Survival, a legal clinic supporting low-income tenants fighting eviction.
From Bridgeport to Caesars Palace
McGuire was born March 20, 1926, in Bridgeport, Conn., and made three Broadway appearances. She performed and understudied alongside Merman, Barbara Cook, Bea Arthur and Tony Randall, and appeared in the original productions of “Plain and Fancy” in 1955-56, “Happy Hunting” in 1956-57 and “Oh, Captain!” in 1958.
She headlined as Mame at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and around the world. Her regional, national and Australian touring productions included “Gypsy,” “Oliver!,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “The Ziegfeld Follies of 1956,” and she shared the stage with Tallulah Bankhead, Celeste Holm, Susan Hayward, Constance Bennett, Jane Russell and Ron Moody.
Sister Mary Quacker and a Nurse
Two 1978 films put McGuire in front of very different audiences. She played Sister Mary Quacker in Cheech & Chong’s “Up in Smoke” and a nurse in “Coma,” the Michael Crichton medical thriller starring Geneviève Bujold.
Her other film credits included “The Incredible Shrinking Woman” in 1981 and “Wishmaster,” the 1997 horror picture starring Robert Englund. Her most recent credit was “Play the Game” in 2009, which also starred Andy Griffith and Doris Roberts.
Steady episodic television work anchored her 70-year career. She turned up on “The Doris Day Show,” “Cannon,” “Columbo,” “Barnaby Jones,” “Baretta,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “Lou Grant,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Moonlighting,” “St. Elsewhere,” “Falcon Crest,” “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,” “Murphy Brown,” “ER” and “7th Heaven,” with one-off appearances on “Little House on the Prairie,” “MacGyver” and “CSI: Miami.”
