Tina Yothers (best known as Jennifer, the youngest Keaton on ‘Family Ties’) began her life on a cold May morning in 1973. The youngest of twelve children, her carny parents couldn’t afford to clothe (let alone feed) their growing clan, and she was sold to NBC for $350 and 12 game tickets (valid only on the midway, not in the games booths… which are crooked anyway).
NBC, having determined she had little to no acting talent at age 2, decided to put her to work in the studio canteen stirring chili. It was 4 years later, over a cauldron of boiling ground beef that a young Gary David Goldberg noticed her and immediately decided to cast her in his latest show.
Sadly, “Daddy Kisses Best” never caught on as a concept… but his back-up project, “Family Ties” did. For the next seven years, the Keatons were the only family she knew and loved (except Brian Bonsall, whom she despised and frequently tormented with sharp sticks and cigarette butts).
When the show was finally put to rest in 1989, Yothers was on her own for the first time in her life and quickly spiraled into a depressing spiral of spirally Spiro-graph addiction. Spiral. She would huddle for hours in dark L.A. alleys drawing complex images until her clothes were ratty and her once bright eyes were ashen and her chubby cheeks were hollowed.
In 1998, after nearly ten years on the streets, her family came to her rescue… they needed her to be there for a health crisis.
Yothers was devastated when she found out her brother had Parkinson’s disease. She was ever more devastated when she found out Michael J. Fox wasn’t even her real brother. There was a terrible scene at the hospital, and Yothers has been in court on and off since fighting NBC for backwages earned in the NBC canteen in the 70’s and 80’s.
Yothers currently resides in sunny Las Hamburguesas, California under the assumed name of Sexy LaRue. She has four cats, two dogs and a llama.
[Disclosure: SilentTalkie was paid by NBC to write this article ( but not well).]
