Michael Chapin came from a family of show business siblings. His brother and sister were both rather well known – Lauren for her role as Kathy in the popular family sitcom Father Knows Best, and his brother Billy for his starring role in The Night of the Hunter with Shelly Winters and Robert Mitchum – as well as numerous TV roles. Michael’s career had the least fanfare of the three, but he did star in his own series of low budget Republic westerns starring the Rough Ridin’ Kids. Among his other roles – albeit uncredited – were small parts in The Night of the Hunter with his brother and It’s a Wonderful Life.
I had the pleasure of meeting Michael Chapin on Saturday, October 11, 2009, at the Lone Pine Film Festival. He immediately struck me as an extremely friendly and personable guy, so although I hadn’t actually seen any of his films, I went ahead and purchased one of his signed photos, which at $10 was half the price of everyone else in the world whose face had every appeared on screen. That morning at 10:15, he did an interesting question and answer session hosted by Cheryl Rogers Barnett (daughter of Roy and Dale), in which he talked about his film career.
Mr. Chapin was what I refer to as ‘one of the good ones’. I went home and immediately sought out a DVD of The Night of the Hunter and am looking forward to seeing Michael and his brother Billy onscreen.
This concludes the trail of celebrities from Lone Pine.
Return to Lone Pine here…
I met both Michael Chapin and Elaine Jannessen (Red and Judy of the Rough Ridin’ Kids) at a Memphis Western film festival. While they did have photos of themselves as children to sell and sign, I found an original photo of both of them and James Bell, who played the Sheriff, at a nearby table. I got it reasonably cheap because it was in the wrong pile of stills. When I showed it to them, they were very impressed and did not charge me to sign it. Ms. Jannessen was a child model and was the little girl pictured on the Sunbeam bread. I told her that she was my first love at age 3.
Mike Newton
January 5th, 2012