Jane Clayton

 Jane Clayton (August 26, 1917 – August 28, 1983)

She was a film, musical theater, and television actress. She starred in the popular 1950s TV series Lassie. Clayton was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer starlet in the early 1940s, appearing in several films, none of them particularly notable, except for an unbilled role in 1948 as a singing inmate in The Snake Pit. She appeared in the role of Julie Jordan in the original 1945 Broadway production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein's classic Carousel. Clayton can be heard on the original cast recordings of both Carousel (1945) and the 1946 Broadway revival of Kern's 1927 musical play Show Boat. Clayton would become best known to TV audiences as the mother of Jeff Miller (Tommy Rettig) on the television series Lassie (aka Jeff's Collie in syndication re-runs). Clayton played the first four seasons of Lassie, from September 1954 to December 1957, as Ellen Miller, a war widow living on her father-in-law's farm with her preteen son, Jeff. Despite Lassie doing well with the TV audiences, Tommy Rettig sought release from his contract in the popular series' fourth season. Clayton quit the production as well at that time. "My home life was being absolutely wrecked," she explained. "I had four children and a husband, and I was always working". The show had to be retooled, with a story line change and cast overhaul. Clayton appeared in only one more Lassie episode after these changed occurred. Following her departure from Lassie, Clayton in 1959 starred in a TV pilot called "The Jan Clayton Show", a sitcom in which she portrayed a college English teacher. Normally a social drinker, she began to drink more following the death of her oldest daughter Sandra, who was killed in a car accident in 1956.

In the 1970's Clayton began receiving treatment for her alcoholism. She joined Alcoholics Anonymous in 1970 and helped counsel other alcoholics on how to reclaim their lives. Every Thursday she worked as a volunteer answering the phone for the Alcoholism Council of Greater Los Angeles, where she later became a board member in the organization. She was married three times, to actor Russell Hayden, Robert Lerner (brother of Jay Lerner), and composer George Greeley. She had one child with Hayden, and three with Lerner, all of her marriages ended in divorce. Jan Clayton died of cancer in West Hollywood, California, on August 28, 1983, just two days after her 66th birthday. She is interred at Fairview Cemetery in Tularosa, New Mexico.