Danielle Spencer, who played the early young boy Dee Thomas in the 1970s Abc -Sitcom What happens!!has died. She was 60.
Spencer died on Monday in a hospital in Richmond, Virginia, her What happens!! So star Haywood Nelson told The Hollywood reporter.
She was diagnosed with her breast cancer and subjected to a double mastectomy in 2014. Emergency operation was carried out in 2018 to relieve bleeding on your brain. A Gofundme page was set up to help her pay for her medical expenses.
“She suffered for a very long time, but it did a lot of courage,” said Nelson.
Co-produced by Everything in the family'S Bud Yorkin, What happens!! was loosely based on the 1975 film Cooley high (Eric Monte wrote the film script and created the Watts-based sitcom). After a successful four -week run that started in August 1976, the comedy returned in November this year and then for another two seasons.
Spencer played Dee, the clever younger sister of Roger “Raj” Thomas (Ernest Thomas) and the daughter of Mabel (Mabel King), and she became known for her catch printout: “Ooooh, I'll tell Mama!” Nelson portrayed the down -to -earth Dwayne on the show.
She repeated the role for the sequel What happens now!Present which were broadcast for another three seasons from 1985.
Spencer became a veterinarian in 1993, and James L. Brooks asked her to play one in his film in 1997. As good as possible. “She had a great love for animals, she was like Betty White in this way,” said Nelson.
Danielle Luise Spencer was born on June 24, 1965 and grew up in New York City by her mother Cheryl, a French teacher, and stepfather, actor Tim Pelt. Danielle Luise Spencer started playing in a repertoire company interviewed by Pelt at the age of 7.
In such films, she had as non -completed parts such as Serpico (1973) and Harry and Tonto (1974) before the role of the role in What happens!! When she was 11 years old and brought her and her family to California.
“I had never seen a young black girl in this kind of spotlight, so I had no reference point in the media about how I deal with this opportunity”, she ” told jet Magazine in 2014. “I was from the Bronx. What I did was my own family as a reference to present my character.”
In September 1977, Spencer was involved in a five-car accident on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, who killed her driving father, who drove and left it in the intensive care unit for several weeks. He had brought her to see her star Wars The evening before the evening before.
“I didn't even have the chance to say goodbye to my stepfather, Daddy Tim, which I loved and who taught me the show business as a small child in New York,” wrote Spencer in her memoir 2010. Through the fire… Journal of a children's star.
After What happens!! Was canceled, Spencer and her family pulled to the Ivory Coast. Then she attended UC Davis, UCLA and then the veterinary school at Tuskegee University and in 1993 received a doctorate in veterinary medicine.
A decade later, Spencer developed a spinal disease – perhaps caused by her car accident – which she had paralyzed out of the waist for months.
Spencer worked as a veterinarian in the Los Angeles area for two decades before moving to Richmond in 2014, where she carried out a regular morning segment for animal care for CBS partner WTVR TV.
In 2014 she was accepted into the National Museum of African American history and culture of Smithsonian.
In addition to her mother, survivors are her brother Jeremy, a jazz musician.
In an interview 2016 with Her The Spencer magazine said it was important to do “what you think you will be happy.”
“You really have to live life for you in this minute,” she said. “And just try to have fun. Be carefree and be happy while you are here, because you never know when this time will end.”