Danielle Spencer of “What’s Happening!!,” Dies at 60
The former teen star died August 11 at age 60 after a long battle with cancer, family spokesperson Sandra Jones said.
Spencer rose to early stardom as a preteen, joining the cast of the groundbreaking comedy at age 11. What’s Happening!!, based on the film Cooley High, was the first television series to focus on the lives of teenagers, and was set in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. It ran from 1976 to 1979.
Actor Danielle Spencer, known for her role in the ABC sitcom ‘What’s Happening!!,’ has died at 60 after battling cancer.
Spencer played Dee, the little sister of Roger “Raj” Thomas (played by Ernest Lee Thomas), an early TV geek character who was a thorn in the side of his teen friends Dwayne (Haywood Nelson) and “Rerun” (Frederick Stubbs). Like a stereotypical kid sister, her catchphrase was “Ooh, I’m gonna tell Mama!”
Despite her early fame, Spencer did not have an easy life. In the first year of the production, she was in a car accident in California that killed her stepfather, Tim Pelt, and left her in a coma. In later years she continued to face neurological and spinal problems that led to numerous surgeries. As late as 2018 she faced emergency surgery, a long-term consequence of the accident. A few years earlier, in 2014 she was diagnosed with breast cancer and had to undergo a double mastectomy.
Yet Spencer was never wedded to the acting business. After undergraduate studies at University of California, Davis, and at UCLA, in 1993 she earned a degree as a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Tuskegee. Thereafter she worked both as a vet and an outspoken advocate for animals.
