‘Family Affair’ Child Star Johnny Whitaker On His ‘Now or Never’ Approach to Life in His 60s

For millions of viewers growing up in the late 1960s, the classic TV sitcom Family Affair offered something comforting and familiar—a neatly ordered world where even life’s biggest disruptions could be resolved with warmth, patience and a little bit of humor.

At the center of it was a quietly emotional premise: a bachelor, played by Brian Keith, suddenly finds himself raising his late brother’s three children with the help of a proper English butler (Sebastian Cabot). Those children were Buffy and Jody—played by Anissa Jones and Johnny Whitaker — whose sibling bond quickly became one of the show’s emotional anchors; and Kathy Garver as older sister Cissy.

Whitaker, with his bright red hair and unmistakable voice, became one of the most recognizable child stars of his generation. Week after week, audiences watched him grow up on screen, navigating childhood within a world that, while fictional, felt deeply real to those watching at home. But what viewers didn’t see was everything that came after.

Today, at 66, his life looks very different from the one that first brought him into living rooms across America. The child star who once worked a rigid studio schedule now spends much of his time focused on something else entirely: service, recovery and, in his words, making the most of the time he has left. “Well, I turned 65 last year… I’m now 66,” he tells Woman’s World. “And I decided that I was going to throw out four Hail Mary passes.”

Those “passes” aren’t about returning to fame so much as redefining what it means. The first has taken the form of cruises he organizes for family, friends and fans — trips that combine nostalgia with something more meaningful. At various stops, Whitaker transforms into “Juanito El Bonito,” visiting orphanages, singing with children and handing out gifts. “My family said that that was the greatest Christmas they’d had in a long time,” he says.

A second project, years in the making, is a documentary examining Portugal’s approach to drug policy—a subject that connects directly to Whitaker’s own life. “I’m a person in long-term recovery from all mind-altering substances,” he says. “I celebrated 28 years clean and sober.”

There’s also a memoir in progress—one he describes as blending personal history with a broader look at the world—and a new film, Skye Bleu, in which he plans to take on one of the most challenging roles of his career.

“So that’s my today— four Hail Mary passes,” he says. “I figure, hey, 66 years old, it’s now or never.”

It’s a striking place to find someone whose life began, professionally at least, in an unlikely way—stepping in at the last minute during a church performance. “I was the only other little kid that kind of knew the words for the song, so I sang the first verse, my sister sang the chorus with the rest of the children, but they sang it in harmony. And then the second verse came up and I forgot the words, but I made them up, because I was not going to look bad in front of these 300 people that were looking at us.” At that moment, a career and a new phase in life began to take shape.

The road to ‘Family Affair

Going back to that church moment, he shares, “A member of the congregation’s son had done a couple of commercials and they said to my mother, ‘You need to take Johnny to see my son’s agent.’ And I did. The first day, the agent said, ‘We’ve got an audition. Can you go?’ And they said yes. I went on the audition and got the job.”

From there, the work started coming, including some with fellow child actor Pamelyn Ferdin (“We did a couple of commercials because we looked cute together”), who played Felix Unger’s daughter on The Odd Couple TV series as well as the lead’s in The Paul Lynde Show, and has the distinction of being the first person to voice Lucy Van Pelt in the animated Charlie Brown specials. From there, Whitaker moved from commercials into episodic television and film, including The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, where he met and worked with Brian Keith.

“He was going to be doing Family Affair and said to my agent that they should bring me on as a guest star, because the actual role for Jody was supposed to be a 10-year-old boy. The role of Buffy was a six-year-old girl and there was the 16-year-old girl Cissy. But when I came to the screen test for the pilot, I was the only six-year-old boy then. They hooked me up with Pamelyn Ferdin and Anissa Jones and a couple of other girls.

“But when they saw Anissa and I looked like twins, they said, ‘We’re changing the script and it’s going to be twins.’ And that’s how I got Family Affair,” Whitaker adds. “I was very lucky in that, but I had talent as well. There’s luck and talent, and my agent, Mary Grady, made sure that while we were on hiatus I was still being sent out on auditions. Even though I became pretty famous with the show, I still got to do guest-starring roles; lots of Westerns, two Green Acres, Bewitched and more.”

At the time, though, he didn’t see it as a career. “I didn’t really know that I was acting,” he admits. “I knew that not all young boys leave the house at 7:00 AM nine months out of the year, go to the set by 8:00, go to school, go on set, go to lunch, go back to school, go back to set, come home… and start it all over five days a week. That was normal for me. I didn’t necessarily know that I was not normal, but I knew that it was not usual and customary. So, when I wasn’t on a set, I yearned to be on a set, because that was a comfortable place for me.”

There was a reason for that. “Being a child star and a child actor, everybody loves you. You’re always coddled and cuddled and loved, and all of us are looking for acceptance and love. So of course I liked that. At the same time, when I came home, I was one of eight siblings and I had to get back in my pecking order there,” he says.

Production memories

Looking back, the Family Affair production itself operated in a way that was anything but typical. Because Brian Keith worked on a condensed schedule—similar to the arrangement Fred MacMurray had on My Three Sons—his scenes were filmed in blocks, leaving the rest of the cast to complete episodes months later around that footage. For a young actor, it raises the question of whether that stop-and-start approach ever felt confusing—moving between scenes and storylines that weren’t being shot in sequence—or whether, as Whitaker has suggested, it simply became part of what felt normal at the time.

“What was most difficult—now looking at it as a producer—was the fact that all 29 scripts for the season had to be basically roughed out minimally by the first day of production,” he says. “And Brian would work three months out of the year and was off the other six months that we were working with the scenes that he wasn’t in. But when Brian was on the set, it was fun. He treated us like nephews and nieces, and we had a fun time with him.”

The production nonetheless required a level of precision that only became clear in hindsight. “The one thing that was most difficult, I’m sure, was the fact that the wardrobe coordinator had to make sure that all of the clothing that we were wearing after each scene matched. We took Polaroids so that we knew what the scene was for what episode and what script, so that four months later, when we did the next scene, we were wearing the right clothing.”

Extra-promotional activities

By the second season, things had expanded beyond the soundstage. Points out Whitaker, “Anissa Jones, or rather the production company, was given the opportunity to have Anissa, or Buffy, be the spokesperson for the Cinderella line of girls’ clothing. And when Elder Manufacturing out of St. Louis, Missouri, found out about Anissa’s deal, they wanted a deal with Jody. So both of us had our own line of clothing during the latter part of the second season.”

And there were even more demands given that the work week may have ended on Fridays, but promotion of the show kicked in for the weekend, seeing the young stars travel from state to state. Then, when the show was on summer hiatus, both Jones and Whitaker did fashion tours with their lines of clothing. “Sometimes,” he says, “we would merge the two, and other times we would not.”

It sounds daunting, but he’s very honest in how he felt: “Being adulated by 15,000 or 20,000 people in a mall is something I basked in. I loved it. Anissa, not so much. She was more quiet and reserved in real life.

As the series continued, that difference became more pronounced with, ultimately, real-life consequences. “In our last season, she was 13 and still wearing the pigtails,” he says. “That was just not something that a preteen and a teenager wants to do. So she was adamantly against it, but contractually obligated and one of the difficulties with Anissa and her life. Another, and I don’t know if she had any kind of disorder, which caused her to stay smaller. I was growing and didn’t have any hormonal imbalance or whatever, and in the last season they stopped referring to us as twins.”

Looking back, especially at what would ultimately happen to his co-star, Whitaker sees more than he did at the time. “In retrospect, I realized that I could have been a better friend to Anissa,” he says. “I did not know what she was going through.”

The ‘Affair’ ends

After Family Affair ended in 1971, Whitaker, unlike so many of his contemporaries in the industry, continued to work. He did four Disney films (The Biscuit Eater, Napoleon and Samantha, Snowball Express and Mystery in Dracula’s Castle), then the title role in the musical film Tom Sawyer. After that, he was cast in the 1974 to 1975 Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning series Sigmund and the Sea Monsters, which he was given a 5% ownership in. “I was very lucky to be able to transfer into young teenage roles,” he understates.

Although he lost contact with Jones, he does remember what others began to relay. “My agent said that she had seen this girl that looked like Anissa, very dejected and sad… sitting on the curb,” he recalls. “She looked high and was just very dejected. I know that Kathy Garver, Cissy, had been contacted by Paula, Anissa’s mother, to befriend her more and be a role model. I don’t really know all that went on with that, but I know that she had a much closer relationship to her in later years that I did. But in retrospect, I feel badly that I didn’t—especially with my Christian upbringing and background—at least try to help.”

Anissa Jones died of a massive drug overdose on August 28, 1976, when she was only 18. “I was 16 when she died, but I had found out about her difficulty at about 14 or 15 and I was in the middle of Sigmund and the Sea Monsters and at the apex of my career at the time. And from what friends of hers said, she just didn’t want anything to do with show business. And her home life was not real positive from what I have gathered in passing years.”

At the time of her death, America had been celebrating the country’s bicentennial. At that time, a producer approached Whitaker’s parents with the idea of “The Johnny Whitaker Show,” a touring variety show featuring him, his brother and two younger sisters. “We took that around the western United States,” he says, “and had a great time. But it was at that time that I found out about Anissa’s passing. We were in Salt Lake City and that Sunday we had a special event where we were giving a fellowship event to friends and family. Somebody had mentioned that they heard that Buffy had died that day… It hit me very strangely, but I kind of sloughed it off.

“The next morning,” he continues, “I was watching television, and Rona Barrett came on Good Morning America and said, ‘Anissa Jones… Buffy… died yesterday of a drug overdose.’I immediately got on the phone and called Les Kauffman’s office, who was the director of publicity for Don Fedderson Productions [the production company behind Family Affair]. He was in Paula’s home in Playa del Rey and when I called, they patched me in to him at Anissa’s home, and I spoke with him and found out that she had passed the day before. It was at that time that I realized that I might need to become a little bit more normal and do some more normal things.”

Making big changes

He told his agent to slow things down and offer him less in the way of opportunities. He went back to high school, school and got actively involved in drama and sports. “I was on the gymnastics team and also was a Yell King—a cheerleader—and was into student government. I had a great opportunity to do plays and be as normal as I could be.”

Graduating early from high school, he did the pilot for a series called Mulligan Stew (costarring Elinor Donahue) and then went on to Brigham Young University, where he studied international relations and Spanish and French. At which point his life shifted yet again as his bishop asked if he was planning on going on a mission.

“I said, ‘I think I’ve been doing good missionary work already,’” Whitaker explains, “and he says, ‘Well, let God make that decision.’ So I put my papers in, and I got sent to the Lisbon, Portugal mission, and that’s why I speak fluent Portuguese. I was there for two years, came home and Hollywood didn’t forget and didn’t forgive that I left for two years, so it was difficult to come back. So, I decided I would learn what was on the other side of the camera—production, writing, producing and directing—which is what I ultimately got my degree in.”

When things went south

All of this, he emphasizes, was kicked off by Anissa Jones’ death in the sense that it made him stop and, again, seek normalcy. “Even though I was not involved in drugs and alcohol at that point, I had had some negative experiences with some casting directors that were not very positive. Some problems caused by adults not being kind to young adults sexually, which kind of screwed me up in that way to a certain extent. And I came out of that needing to pay penance to a certain extent for what had happened—although it was not my fault, you still feel that it is, because I enjoyed it. I mean, there was pleasure in what had happened to a certain extent— emotionally, no, but physically yes. And I had made that decision to turn my will and my life over to God.”

Sadly, things were destined to get worse. He continues the scenario: “I came home from my mission, fell in love with this beautiful model. A year later we got married. Three years into the marriage, she chose to divorce me, and within nine months she was married to the man who gave me my bachelor party. And that was one of the traumas that I had to go through. And then the second trauma was this young lady that I was dating. She became pregnant and chose to end her life and the pregnancy. That was strike two. And then strike three, I went off in sex, drugs and rock and roll for the next 10 years.”

He lets that sit in for a moment before continuing, noting that the healing process continues to this date. “There are some things I’m still getting over and trying to deal with,” he says, “but at 66, you’ve seen a whole lot, you’ve experienced a whole lot and there’s not a whole lot that I haven’t done or haven’t experienced, so I don’t need a whole lot more.”

But there was more that happened before he reached the state he is currently at, and that involved the death by suicide of Brian Keith on June 24, 1997. About six weeks before that, Whitaker was a guest at an autograph show when a fan informed him that his former co-star was seriously ill.

Acquiring Keith’s phone number he reached out, and at first the older man wasn’t pleased to hear from him, demanding to know how he had gotten his phone number. Gradually, however, things became warmer, with Keith apologizing and saying that he wasn’t in a good mood.

Explains Whitaker, “I said, ‘Brian, I heard that you are very ill, and I wanted you to know that I’m praying for you, and I wanted you to know how much I love you and care about you and have respected you and the work that you’ve done and what you’ve taught me as an actor and as a human being.’ ‘Oh, Johnny, I’m so sorry. I’m just an old fart. The doctors give me five days to live.’ ‘Oh my goodness… five days?’”

“‘Yeah,” Keith said. “But I’m going to be okay, I guess. I just don’t want to be looked at because it’s not pretty what I look like now.” Whitaker tried to lighten the moment. “I said, ‘Ah, Brian, don’t worry about it. We’ll make sure that you’re looking good.’”

Keith laughed, and the two men kept talking — about their careers, about their lives, about the years that had passed. There was a sense, Whitaker suggests, that Keith was proud of him. But Keith was still mourning the death by overdose of his daughter Daisy two months earlier. A little later, they said tearful goodbyes. Five days after that, Whitaker learned that Keith had committed suicide by shooting himself. “Now, Kathy Garver said something very poignant,” he shares, “saying that Brian did not want the Grim Reaper to meet him, he wanted to meet the Grim Reaper on his terms, which I totally agree with. And after having the opportunity to talk with him five days before, I knew that he had made peace with God.”

The moment that changed everything

But the story still doesn’t end there: “Five days after his passing, I’m driving home from a computer job that I had been doing for about a week. I’m driving on the 5 Freeway through Burbank, and I’m going 60, 65 miles an hour, and the phone rings. It’s one of the publicity people or newspapers — ABC, NBC — somebody wanting to know how I’m doing with Brian’s death. I reach down to answer the phone, and as I pick it up, I look in front of me—all the cars have stopped. So I start pumping the brakes, wondering what’s going to happen next. My car starts to slide, and I move over into the no-man’s lane, the far left, keep pumping the brakes, and then my car takes a turn to the right, and I go across four lanes of traffic. Right into the center of a semi-truck.

“And I hear Brian’s voice say, ‘Duck, cover, roll!’ Clear as I am speaking to you. That, I believe, was an angel—Brian being himself, caring about me. So as I heard that voice, I let go of the steering wheel, I covered my head, I ducked down and moved to the side just as my car came in contact with the semi. The top of my car—and I would’ve lost my head—was gone. And my car was then pushed out while the truck continued to go and then pulled over. I had no idea what was happening, but I figured with the way that the cars were, I was going to be bombarded with more cars hitting me. So I just stayed down.

“And then a nurse who had seen it got out of her car, pulled over and knocked on the window to see if I was alive. I look up and I’ve got some blood and some glass all over me. And she goes, ‘Are you okay?’ And I say, ‘I think so.’ She opened the door to the passenger side. The driver’s side was completely smashed in. So I got out, and she said, ‘I can’t believe that you survived that without a scratch on you.’ I looked up and I said, ‘Thank you, Brian.’ After that, I went to the funeral and am forever grateful to Brian for that.”

And it was then that Whitaker turned his life around, getting sober and staying so for the past 28 years and counting. He also refuses to flinch as he looks back at the life he’s lived, whether it was his days as Jody Davis on Family Affair, the success that greeted him afterwards, the emotional pain that led to his spiraling down into the world of addiction or eventually finding the strength—and inspiration—to pull himself out of it.

“Going back to the Native American idea of blessing it and keeping it or blessing it and throwing it away,” says Johnny Whitaker, “I think I’ve been able to hold on to more positive than negative things that I’ve had to let go of. And I don’t think I would’ve changed much if I—as a 66-year-old man today—look back at it. Okay, maybe few things I would’ve changed had I known what some of the next steps were going to be, but none of us get that foresight. I am glad to have gone through what I have. It’s still not easy today, but I am blessed to still be here, to have a home, have friends and family. Just lots of good people that I’ve had the privilege of meeting and being with. There are still problems here and there that we all have to deal with, but, most of all, I’m blessed.

“I truly am.”

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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 7:00 AM.