‘Happy Days’ actress likely died of cancer
Indiana autopsy concludes Moran was in stage 4
Erin Moran, the former Happy Days child star who was found dead at her Indiana home over the weekend, likely died of cancer, according to the Harrison County Sheriff ’s Office and the county coroner.
A statement released by authorities Monday said that an autopsy found that Moran “likely succumbed to complications of stage 4 cancer.”
Toxicology tests were performed and results are pending, but “no illegal narcotics were found” at Moran’s residence in New Salisbury, Ind., about 20 miles from Louisville.
The statement did not say what kind of cancer Moran had.
Erin Moran-Fleischmann, who was best known for playing Joanie Cunningham on the longrunning sitcom Happy Days and its short-lived spinoff, Joanie Loves Chachi, was found dead by police responding to a 911 call to her home on Saturday. She was 56. Her death brought out mourn- ful tweets from her former costars, including Ron Howard, Henry Winkler and Scott Baio, her former boyfriend on- and offscreen.
“Such sad sad news. RIP Erin. I’ll always choose to remember you on our show making scenes better, getting laughs and lighting up tv screens,” Howard tweeted.
Moran, who was born Oct. 18, 1960, in Burbank, Calif., landed her first big role on the children’s adventure show Daktari when she was just 8. The show premiered the same year she made her film debut opposite Debbie Reynolds in How Sweet It Is.
She occupied herself with TV work until she landed the role of the youngest child of the Cunningham family. The series, which took place between 1955 and 1965, premiered on ABC in 1974. She left to star in Joanie Loves Chachi, but that show was canceled after one season. She rejoined the Happy Days cast for its final season, which ended in 1984.
Her post- Happy Days credits include guest stints on The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. Moran also jumped on the reality TV bandwagon, doing a season of VH1’s weight-loss show Celebrity Fit Club in 2008. She had only a few acting jobs in the last 25 years (her most recent credit was 2010’s Not Another B Movie), according to her IMDb page.