Kathryn Adams Doty

The daughter of a Methodist minister, Dr. Chris G. Hohn,^[3] Doty was born in New Ulm, Minnesota. When she was six,^[4] the family moved to Warrenton, Missouri,^[3] where her father was chaplain and executive secretary at an orphans' home.^[4] 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."^[4]

Doty was a student at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, (where she sang in the a cappella choir)^[4] and worked as a catalog clerk at the headquarters of Montgomery Ward^[5] 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,^[4] and remained in California to begin a film career under the name of Kathryn Adams.

Doty debuted on film in Fifth Avenue Girl (1939).^[4] One of her more notable roles was as Mrs. Brown, the young mother in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942).^[6] She co-starred in Sky Raiders (1941), a film serial from Universal Pictures, and had the leading lady role in three Western films in which Johnny Mack Brown starred.^[7]

She married fellow actor Hugh Beaumont in an Easter wedding on April 13, 1941, at Hollywood Congregational Church.^[8]

She earned a master's degree in educational psychology and had a career as a medical practitioner, 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.^[7]

Writing as Kathryn Doty, she published short stories in Pocket, The Friend and various children's magazines.^[7]

Adams died on October 14, 2016, aged 96, in an assisted living facility in Mankato, Minnesota.^[1][2]