Erin Moran Longest Child Actor Death Sentence Ever

Erin Moran, known more formally as Joanie from Happy Days, died over the weekend as a long culmination of a life of addiction and depression following a prominent child acting career. Most people only became away of Moran at thirteen when she became a sitcom star for the next decade, but she began acting full time at five as a kid in numerous TV shows in the 60’s. Wonder how that story turned out.

Moran declared herself mentally ill and unable to work and moved to the mountains thirty year ago. Not much good happened after that. Unless you were her bankruptcy attorneys. Or her drug connect. Residuals being what they were back then, there was no way to be a heavy user and still do up life like Charlie Sheen would twenty years later. She was mostly reported to be living in and out of trailers, with relatives, and occasionally found looking horrible in alleyways. 

Social media’s front end of the bell-curve quickly blamed Henry Winkler and Ron Howard and the cast for not taking better care of Moran in her descent. Because you know how you’d love to take in a drug addict you once worked with forty years ago. It’s a convenient bit of responsibility shifting from her parents who shipped her off to rape camp in lieu of kindergarten. Calling out Fonzi seems misguided. 

There are random ills of society and there are intentional ills that people find comforting to label as random. Moran’s parents sold her out for a reason they couldn’t possibly make sound decent. We need to move faster on those cute freckled kid robots.

_{Photo credits: Happy Days / Daktari}