My wife and I went to an antique mall the other day. As we walked in the door I couldn’t help but notice an odd little doll staring back at us from behind a glass case in the entryway. I don’t usually notice dolls but this one looked strangely familiar. It stood about 2 feet tall dressed in a blue and white polka dot dress with yellow fringe. Her blonde hair was bobbed short and her bright blue eyes were peering out front behind square eyeglasses. I asked my wife Rhonda why this doll looked so familiar to me and she quickly answered, “Oh, that’s just Mrs. Beasley. You know, from Family Affair.”
Family Affair? I remember that TV show. Most of all, I remember the owner of that little doll; Anissa Jones. But before I get ahead of myself, for those of you who need a refresher course. Family Affair told the story of a handsome New York City bachelor who becomes the guardian of his nieces and nephew when their parents suddenly die in a car accident. William Davis (a.k.a. “Uncle Bill” played by Brian Keith) is the head of an engineering firm who finds that he has to put his playboy lifestyle on hold to raise these kids. At first he believes it will only be a temporary position, but by the end of the first episode he comes to adore the children and enlists his butler Mr. French (Sebastian Cabot) as their co-protector. The show ran for five seasons from 1966 to 1971 and was in the top five rated programs on TV for three of those seasons.
Maybe you’re visualizing that doll, Mrs. Beasley. Maybe the theme song is weaving a path through your head like an ear worm …”da da da dun dada da dun dun, da da da dun dada da dun dun.” Or maybe, like me, you remember Buffy — Anissa Jones. Did you know she was from Indiana? Ironically, on the show, the three kids were born and raised in Terre Haute when they moved to Manhattan to live with their Uncle Bill.
Mary Anissa Jones was born in West Lafayette, Indiana to Purdue faculty member Dr. John Paul Jones and his wife Mary “Paula” Tweel on March 11, 1958. Paula was of Lebanese descent and the child’s middle name (pronounced Ah-NEE-Sah) meant “little friend” in Arabic. A little over a year later, a baby brother, Paul, arrived. (More about him later).
The family moved to Playa del Rey, California while the children were still toddlers but the parents soon divorced in 1965. The divorce undoubtedly affected Anissa adversely and contributed to her precociousness. The most immediate change in behavior was that Anissa and her baby brother Paul became inseparable.
Anissa’ s mom was a school teacher; her dad, a well paid engineer for Hughes Aircraft. But Anissa’s dad has been described as a deadbeat who abandoned his family. Dr. Jones was court ordered to pay $80 per child per month in support. He eventually fell over $10,000.00 behind in child support. This delinquency caused the family car to be repossessed and the family home to go into foreclosure. Despite these terrible family setbacks, Anissa’s career was just starting to take off.
Paula enrolled Anissa in dance class at the tender age of four. Her troupe was asked to perform on The Art Linkletter Show, and 7-year-old Anissa was singled out to do a cartwheel. She failed the first time, landing on her rear end instead, and the audience roared with laughter. Anissa picked herself up and tried it again, this time she nailed it. Although the audience loved it, Anissa was mortified by her initial failure and cried all the way home.
An agent was in the audience that night and he immediately contacted her mother to sign Anissa to a contract. Soon, Jones began landing jobs in television commercials, appearing in close to two dozen commercials before the age of eight. Television producer Don Fedderson was putting together the cast for a new series called Family Affair. The show needed a 15-year-old girl (Cissy), an 6-year-old boy (Jodie) and another 6-year-old girl (Buffy). Although 8 years of age, Anissa auditioned for and won the part of Elizabeth “Buffy” Patterson-Davis thanks to her youthful look, charming personality and above-average acting talent.
Series star Brian Keith suggested Fedderson consider a little boy he’d recently worked on in the film The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming who had the ability to cry on cue. Redheaded 6-year-old Johnnie Whitaker’s casting as Jodie required a shift in the concept. He and Jones were written as fraternal twins, with Cathy Garver cast as their 15-year-old sister. (Garver was nearly 21 at the time!)
In another case of life imitating art, Anissa’s parents bitter divorce caused upheaval in her home life which transferred well to her orphan TV character being shuttled here and there under traumatic circumstances. Anissa didn’t have to stretch to obtain the forlorn, dejected qualities that Buffy initially displayed on the show. The first couple of episodes of Family Affair highlighted the adjustments to this newly formed unconventional family unit and the misunderstandings that were sure to arise when a confirmed bachelor takes on three youngsters. This theme, perhaps commonplace by today’s standards, was considered edgy and controversial for the 1960s.
Eventually, the TV quintet solidified into a warm family unit dealing with the regular sort of issues befalling any family. Rotund Sebastian Cabot portrayed the fastidious, efficient British butler whose household and lifestyle are upended as much as his employer’s by the arrival of the children. His exasperation eventually melted into affection and the vision of this large man with a tiny twin on each side became a favorite TV image. At first, Anissa called him “Mr. Cabot,” but as their relationship grew closer she began calling him “Sabby.” When her cat Tiger (a gift from Brian Keith) had kittens, she named one of them Sabby in his honor.
Admittedly, the series was often over-produced and overly sweet, but it was also pleasant, charming, tender, amusing and most of all, cute. The premise of a sitcom featuring an unconventional family was considered innovative but Family Affair opened the door for future shows like Nanny and the Professor, The Brady Bunch, Diff’rent Strokes, and Who’s the Boss to be accepted and believable. The character of Cindy on The Brady Bunch (played by Susan Olsen) was in fact based on Anissa Jones’ Buffy character in both appearance and demeanor.
No doubt about it, Anissa Jones was cuter-than-cute. Her natural precocious manner along with her thoughtful freckle-faced visage and sweet plaintive voice made her irresistible to children and adults alike. The vision of the pint sized, pig-tailed prodigy asking questions that she didn’t know the answer to (but had suspicions of what the answers were) is what most fans remember Buffy for. Well, either that or the image of Mrs. Beasley, the doll that started this conversation off. Buffy and Mrs. Beasley were inseparable. Anissa’s character treated the doll not as an inanimate object, but as a close friend with whom she would often talk to and confide in.
Family Affair was, like Fedderson’s previous series My Three Sons starring Fred MacMurray, almost completely geared to fit its leading man. It must be remembered that both MacMurray and Keith were movie stars, not TV stars. Fred MacMurray arranged to have all of his scenes filmed together in a certain block of time, then the rest of the cast would do their own scenes later after MacMurray had left the set. Likewise, Keith’s scenes were filmed all in a row and in a certain time frame, leaving the rest of the cast to work around them after the fact.
It’s a testament to the acting skills of both child stars when you realize that Anissa Jones and Johnny Whitaker could give the type of performances they did while filming scenes and episodes completely out of sequence. Many times Uncle Bill wasn’t even present on the set, let alone in the room and the scenes were patched together later in editing. Keep in mind that they were filming 30 episodes a year during those first two years — many more than are filmed nowadays.
Naturally, though they got on well with Keith (and Whitaker, in particular, adored him) his absences caused them to naturally gravitate more towards Sebastian Cabot. During the series, Cabot was stricken with bleeding ulcers in real life and had to exit the program for a while. In his absence, another actor stepped in as his brother and took over the role until Cabot returned — 40 pounds lighter than when he’d left! But the Buffy character proved to be so popular with fans that when Anissa broke her leg in real life, it was written into the show. For an entire year of episodes Anissa’s leg was put in a cast and the scripts were revised to reflect her injury so that there would be no loss of production time.
Anissa would play Buffy for the show’s entire five year run. Her schedule was grueling, often requiring her to work seven days a week year round. In June of 1969, the show hit number 1 in the ratings, turning Buffy and Jody into household names. Mrs. Beasley, Buffy’s doll, also became the best-selling doll in America.
Anissa’s fame skyrocketed. She guest-starred in numerous television specials including Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, To Rome With Love, and as a presenter at the 1967 Emmy Awards. Anissa, alongside Jimmy Durante, presented the Monkees with an Emmy for “Best Comedy Series” that year. Merchandising deals soon followed with Buffy paper dolls, Family Affair coloring books and lunch boxes, a Buffy line of children’s clothes, and a Buffy cookbook, not to mention magazines and more TV commercials. The strain on Anissa was beginning to show.
Her mother was still a hard working school teacher with bills to pay and much of Anissa’s growing fortune was locked away in a trust fund unavailable for anything other than emergencies until the child star turned 18. With no money to spare for babysitters, Anissa’s younger brother Paul almost always accompanied her to the studio. Anissa was extremely close to Paul and her love and kindness often showed on the set. As the star of a hit TV series, Anissa often received gifts from advertisers, fans and the studio. She always demanded that an identical one for her brother accompany any gift she received. If a gift were not brought for Paul, she would give hers away. Even at this young age, Anissa’s kind heart was beginning to show.
As proof of her kindness, when Earl Graham, a janitor on the Family Affair set died, Anissa had her Mom take out a $400 ad in Variety Magazine wherein Anissa said goodbye to her good friend. Although Earl was in reality nothing more than a janitor on the set, Anissa saw him as a kind friend. Family Affair would last for five seasons and 138 total episodes, garnering seven Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for the show and its stars along the way. But after the 1971 season the show began to slump in the ratings and was abruptly cancelled.
Surprisingly, Anissa was thrilled that the show’s run was over. Now she could finally go to school, hang out with her friends, and just be a normal girl. Most of all it meant she could finally be rid of those cursed pigtails and that stupid Mrs. Beasley doll that the producers insisted she continue to play with even though she was now 13 years old. Anissa Jones had grown tired of show biz.
Next week — Part 2. The Family Affair Curse.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
