Back on the ‘Streets’

Darleen Carr considers herself lucky, “especially as a woman,” to have survived in Hollywood for nearly three decades.

“I have been really blessed that I haven’t had to get another job to stay alive,” she says. “I have always put one foot in front of the other and have been really fortunate.”

Though Carr has been a regular on seven television series, guest-starred on countless others and appeared in features such as “The Beguiled,” she is best known as Jean Stone, Lt. Mike Stone’s (Karl Malden) daughter on the old ABC series “The Streets of San Francisco.” This Monday, Carr and Malden reprise their roles in NBC’s “Back to the Streets of San Francisco.”

The Chicago-born actress began her professional career at 13 when she recorded the singing voices for the children in the Oscar-winning film “The Sound of Music.” After making her acting debut in the film “The Littlest Hobo,” Carr was placed under contract by Walt Disney a year before his death.

“He was grooming me to be his next Hayley Mills,” Carr says.

But Carr never got to become Hayley Mills II. After Disney died in December, 1966, the studio dropped Carr. In retrospect, she says, it was a blessing her contract wasn’t renewed.

“I became a free-lance actress rather than a child star, so I was able to weather all of those age changes that you go through and still kept working.”