Barbara Whiting entered show business with a famous surname but still had to grow up in public. Born in Los Angeles in 1931, she was the daughter of songwriter Richard A. Whiting and the younger sister of singer Margaret Whiting. Music and performers were part of family life, yet Barbara’s own career began not as an imitation of her sister but as a teenage actress.

At thirteen she appeared in the film Junior Miss, based on the popular stories of adolescent Judy Graves. The part led naturally into radio, where Whiting later took over the title character in the Junior Miss series from 1948 to 1953. Radio was especially well suited to the material because teenage comedy depended on speed, embarrassment and the intensity of small social disasters rather than spectacle.

Whiting was close enough in age to Judy that the performance avoided one of radio comedy’s common tricks, the adult actor playing permanent adolescence. She could give the character the impatience and certainty of an actual young person while still working inside a professional ensemble. The role grew with her during years when she herself was moving from adolescence into adulthood.

Her radio career did not remain inside teenage comedy. Whiting appeared in The Great Gildersleeve, Broadway Is My Beat, The Railroad Hour, Escape, The Line Up and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. That spread shows an actress learning how to move from a recognizable youthful persona into repertory work with very different stakes.

Film and television continued the transition. Whiting appeared in pictures including Home, Sweet Homicide and Dangerous When Wet, then co-starred with Margaret in Those Whiting Girls, a CBS television comedy used as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy. After marrying in 1959, she stepped away from professional acting and lived mostly outside Hollywood until her death in 2004.