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] They had three children. After divorcing Beaumont in 1974, she married Fred Doty, and relocated to her native Minnesota. Fred Doty died on January 8, 2011, aged 96.

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.[7]

While in her 80s, Adams Doty wrote two novels for young adult readers: A Long Year of Silence (2004) and Wild Orphan (2006), both set in New Ulm, Minnesota, during World War I. She was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and winner of the 2005 Midwest Book Award. A third book, Becoming the Mother of Me (2009), described her life growing up as a minister's daughter, 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.[7]

Adams died on October 14, 2016, aged 96, in an assisted living facility in Mankato, Minnesota.[9][10]

• Kathryn Adams Doty at IMDb
• Kathryn Adams Doty Archived March 3, 2016, at the Wayback Machine at Edinborough Press