BILLY CHAPIN

(28 December 1943 – 2 December 2016)

The child actor Billy Chapin had a film and TV career that lasted about eight years up to 1958. He had uncredited appearances as a baby and a tot in the mid-1940s before television took hold in 1952. His first film, Affair With a Stranger (1953) starred Jean Simmons, his next, The Kid From Left Field had Dan Dailey and Anne Bancroft. He also worked with Dailey on There’s No Business Like Show Business, playing the Johnnie Ray character aged ten. Tobor the Great was a space age tale of robots, Naked Alibi was a film noir with Sterling Hayden, A Man Called Peter starred Richard Todd, and Violent Saturday was another film noir.

Chapin will, however, be mainly remembered for playing the boy in The Night of the Hunter, Charles Laughton’s only directorial outing for which he personally selected the boy on account of his incredible expertise in film acting. Chapin’s last film was a B-western, Tension at Table Rock in 1956. For his stage debut in Three Wishes for Jamie in 1951, Chapin won the New York Drama Critics’ Award for most promising newcomer.

MICHAEL DARVELL