Terry Burnham

Elizabeth Teresa Burnham was born on August 8, 1949, in Los Angeles, California. She was the younger of two children born to Guy Calvin Burnham, an aeronautics engineer at Douglas Aircraft Company, and his wife Elizabeth Teresa Buelna Symons, a homemaker.^[3][8][9] She was raised Catholic and attended St. Maria Goretti Catholic School,^[10] St. Cornelius School,^[3] Mark Twain Middle School,^[11][12] and Bancroft Junior High School.^[13]

On December 22, 1955, Burnham made her television debut at age six alongside Brandon deWilde in the series Climax!, in an episode entitled "The Day They Gave the Babies Away". (This was based on the 1946 novel of the same title, which was also adapted for the 1957 film All Mine to Give.) More prominent roles soon followed, most notably in 1957 with "Let There Be Light", an episode of the series M Squad, which starred Lee Marvin, who Burnham later singled out as her favorite actor.^[3] Also that year, Burnham was set to star in a new child-centered series, Turquoise, Inc., whose writer/producers Dick Chevillat and Ray Singer touted her as "TV's first Shirley Temple".^[14] That projected series was never produced, but a year later, Burnham appeared on an episode of Temple's own series, entitled "The Magic Fishbone". It was adapted by Margaret Fitts from the Charles Dickens short story of the same name.^[15][16]

She first attracted national attention as "Susie", the 8-year-old daughter of Lana Turner's character in Imitation of Life (1959).^[17] Sandra Dee played the girl as a teenager.

Burnham worked in numerous episodes of TV series through the late 1950s and 1960s. She retired from acting in 1971.^[6]

On October 7, 2013, Terry Burnham died of a cardiac arrest.^[1] As she had no surviving next of kin, her unclaimed cremated remains were stored at Los Angeles County Crematorium. On August 8, 2018, which would have been her 69th birthday, Burnham's ashes were buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Long Beach.^[10]