Janet MacLachlan

Janet Angel MacLachlan (August 27, 1933 – October 11, 2010) was an American actress born in Harlem, New York City, to Iris South MacLachlan and James MacLachlan, both Jamaican-born members of the Church of the Illumination. She attended P.S. 170 and Julia Ward Junior High School before graduating from Julia Richman High School in 1950. MacLachlan earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Hunter College in 1955, after which she worked as an executive secretary in New York City before pursuing a career in acting.

MacLachlan made her Broadway debut in 1962 in Burning Bright. She also performed at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and later became a contract player for Universal Studios. Her television debut came in 1965 with two episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Her subsequent television work included appearances on The Fugitive, The Invaders, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek, Ironside, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Wonder Woman, The Mod Squad, The Rockford Files, All in the Family, and The Golden Girls. Among her specific television roles, she portrayed Mrs. Baxter in the 1968 Invaders episode "The Vise."

Her film career spanned more than three decades, encompassing Uptight (1968), Change of Mind (1969), ...tick...tick...tick... (1970), Darker Than Amber (1970), Halls of Anger (1970), The Man (1972), Tightrope (1984), Murphy's Law (1986), The Boy Who Could Fly (1986), and The Thirteenth Floor (1999). MacLachlan is particularly noted for her supporting role as Camille Johnson, a young teacher, in Sounder (1972). Her career brought her into professional contact with Bill Cosby, Jim Brown, James Earl Jones, Maya Angelou, and Morgan Freeman.

In 1981, MacLachlan received a Los Angeles-area Emmy Award for her performance in KCET's Voices of Our People: In Celebration of Black Poetry. She later served as grant committee chairman for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A resident of the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles in her later years, MacLachlan died on October 11, 2010, at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Los Angeles from complications of cardiovascular disease. She was 77 years old.