Before she turned up as a sitcom grandmother on “Growing Pains,” Betty McGuire shared Broadway stages with Ethel Merman.
McGuire, the actress who played Maggie Seaver’s mother on the ABC comedy, died of natural causes on Oct. 8, 2026, at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 100.
Keith Gerchak, an actor, co-founder of Double G Films and a close family friend who served as her power of attorney, confirmed the death on Sunday, Oct. 18. McGuire had lived at the facility, a retirement home for entertainment industry veterans, since 2017.
Grandmother to the Seaver Children
McGuire played Kate Malone, mother of Joanna Kerns’ Maggie Seaver and grandmother to the Seaver children, in 12 episodes from 1986-91. She was on the show beginning with the first season, with appearances continuing into Season 7, opposite Gordon Jump as her onscreen husband, Ed.
The series, about a Long Island family, ran on ABC from 1985 to 1992 and starred Kerns, Alan Thicke and Kirk Cameron. Leonardo DiCaprio joined the cast in the final season and appeared in more than 20 episodes.
The Staffers She Put on Camera
“NBC Nightly News” profiled her retirement home in 2019 and found McGuire running a talk show of her own. She hosted and produced “GabFest” on Channel 22, the closed-circuit station on the campus, and aimed the program at the dreams and life stories of the staffers rather than the famous residents.
“I’m a happy camper,” she said in the segment. She added: “To have the chance to do new things and different things at 92, can you think of anything better? I can’t.”
She also volunteered as a receptionist and advocate for the Coalition for Economic Survival, a legal clinic that supports low-income tenants fighting eviction.
From Merman’s Broadway to Las Vegas
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 in the original productions of “Plain and Fancy” in 1955-56, “Happy Hunting” in 1956-57 and “Oh, Captain!” in 1958.
She later headlined as Mame at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and around the world. Her regional, national and Australian touring work included “Gypsy,” “Oliver!,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “The Ziegfeld Follies of 1956,” and she shared stages with Tallulah Bankhead, Celeste Holm, Susan Hayward, Constance Bennett, Jane Russell and Ron Moody.
From “Up in Smoke” to “Coma”
Two 1978 films put her 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 anchored her 70-year career. She worked 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.”
No family members survive her.