What Happened to Original ‘Happy Days’ Star Kathy O’Dare Is Just So Sad
When Kathy O’Dare appeared alongside her Happy Days costar Ron Howard on the cover of TV Guide Magazine in 1974, it was a pretty darn big deal for the then-16-year-old actress.
Opening up the magazine and looking at the original description of the Happy Days series premiere episode, it’s hard to tell whether or not Kathy’s character, the blond bombshell Mary Lou Mulligan, was going to recur on the show. But given her TV Guide Magazine cover, along her stellar performance during that very first episode, you’ve got to think that Kathy was hopeful that she might have a future on the program.
However, the heartbreaking truth about Kathy and Happy Days is that she was never asked to come back and play Mary Lou again. And even though she did return to the program one more time, to play a different character during the show’s third season, I can only imagine how disappointing it must have been for her to come to the agonizingly slow realization that Happy Days wasn’t going to be a home for her.
Albert Watson/TV Guide/courtesy Everett Collection
Kathy did, however, appear onscreen with Ron Howard one more time, in the 1976 comedy Eat My Dust. After Happy Days and Eat My Dust, Kathy had two more acting credits to her name: In 1977, she appeared in a TV movie called The Greatest Thing That Almost Happened, and in 1978, she appeared in the feature film Texas Detour with Patrick Wayne.
And that was all she wrote, folks. Nothing more after that. Nada.
So, what happened? Well, Kathy’s brother, David F. D’Orazi, actually wrote a book about his sister. It turns out that Kathy struggled with a mental illness, having been diagnosed with schizophrenia. In his book, Everbody Happy? The Untold Story of Kathy O’Dare: A Hollywood Starlet and Her Struggles With Mental Illness, David attempts to shed light on the challenges that living with mental illness present, and hopefully assist others in helping their loved ones with similar struggles.
“I am hoping that now that Kathy’s story is written, every generation going forward will read her story, and they will learn from it, and they may be able to help one of their loved ones, family or friends live a better life,” he shared in September 2022.
Everett Collection
For those of you who may have heard of the term but aren’t really familiar with schizophrenia, symptoms commonly include delusions, hallucinations, very unusual behavior, and disorganized thinking and speech. It’s quite common for people with schizophrenia to have paranoid thoughts or even hear voices. Truthfully, folks, it’s hard to think of a challenge more difficult than this one. And I guess knowing what Kathy was up against makes it a little easier to understand why she couldn’t continue to work.
Perhaps some of Kathy’s mental health struggles were genetic. Her father, Tony, who was a cartoonist at Walt Disney Studios and then found fame on television in the 1950s as “Uncle Tony,” also struggled mightily with issues related to mental health throughout his entire life.
Sadly, Kathy passed away in 2010. There are conflicting stories about the cause of death, so in fairness and out of respect to her family, I’m not even going to go there. However, what I will say is that it is just tremendously sad that this beautiful and talented actress had so many struggles during her lifetime.
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