Kathryn Elizabeth Doty, also known by her stage name Kathryn Adams or as Kathryn Adams Doty, was an American actress.
Early years
The daughter of a Methodist minister, Dr. Chris G. Hohn, Doty was born in New Ulm, Minnesota. When she was six, the family moved to Warrenton, Missouri, where her father was chaplain and executive secretary at an orphans' home. After she developed lung problems, she spent two years at a camp in Minnesota. As early as age 13, she took her father's place in the pulpit when he was sick. In a 1939 newspaper article, she recalled: "It was quite a radical thing, in that small town, for a little girl to conduct the church services and preach the sermon, but the congregation understood and were very kind to me." Doty was a student at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and worked as a catalog clerk at the headquarters of Montgomery Ward when an opportunity for an acting career arose. She competed in 1939 in the national finals of the Jesse L. Lasky radio contest Gateway to Hollywood, received a contract, and remained in California to begin a film career under the name of Kathryn Adams.
Film
Doty debuted on film in Fifth Avenue Girl. One of her more notable roles was as Mrs. Brown, the young mother in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur. She co-starred in Sky Raiders, a film serial from Universal Pictures and had the leading lady role in three Western films in which Johnny Mack Brown starred.
Personal life
She married fellow actor Hugh Beaumont in an Easter wedding on April 13, 1941, at Hollywood Congregational Church. They had three children. After divorcing Beaumont in 1974, she married Fred Doty, and relocated to her native Minnesota. Fred Doty died on January 8, 2011, aged 88. She earned a master's degree in educational psychology and had a career as a psychologist, working at the Footlight's Child Guidance Clinic at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center and later in Minnesota after she moved back to her home state.
Writing
While in her 80s, Adams Doty wrote two novels for young adult readers: A Long Year of Silence and Wild Orphan. A Long Year of Silence, both set in New Ulm, Minnesota, during World War I. She was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award and winner of the 2005 Midwest Book Award. A third book, Becoming the Mother of Me, described her life growing up as a minister's daughter, her trip to Hollywood and her first marriage. Writing as Kathryn Doty, she published short stories in Pocket, The Friend and various children's magazines.
