Danielle Spencer Was A Deadpan Dynamo on ‘What’s Happening!!’

Dee Thomas was the stealth comedy weapon of hit 1970s sitcom What’s Happening!! While the show’s laughs were ostensibly the responsibility of its three leads, high school buddies Raj, Dwayne and Rerun, the biggest audience responses usually came when Raj’s little sister, Dee, delivered a deadpan knockout punch when no one was looking. 

Dr. Danielle Spencer, the actress who played Dee, passed away yesterday at the age of 60, according to co-star Haywood Nelson. She had been battling cancer. 

Spencer, who left acting to become a veterinarian, was a crackling counterpoint to most ‘70s child stars. While kids like Gary Coleman, Danny Bonaduce and the youngest members of The Brady Bunch traded on their overeager cuteness, Dee rarely cracked a smile, delivering withering wisecracks that put all the older kids (and often the adults) in their place. She was somehow the oldest, wisest, most world-weary voice in the room — and it was all the funnier because the jokes were coming from the show’s youngest comic.

“Danielle Spencer just had the right acid-y tone to make the show zing,” What’s Happening producer Bernie Ornstein told the Academy Foundation. “She and Fred (Rerun) Barry, I think, were the two people on the show that made it very successful.”

What’s Happening’s IMDb user reviews are full of praise for Spencer’s Dee:

• “Props go to Danielle Spencer, who for someone so young at the time, possessed so much comedic talent.”
• “Dee, with all the sarcasm, you never stopped laughing.”
• “I liked Dee (Danielle Spencer) a lot because she handled the role of childhood star with grace. After her childhood acting days ended, she didn’t use the money for bad reasons. She went on to become a veterinarian. Which can show people that you can be a childhood star and still live a normal adult life.”

Spencer’s Dee character was unlike any other on television in the 1970s. “I had never seen any young Black girl in that type of spotlight, so I didn’t have a reference point in the media as to how to deal with this opportunity,” she told Jet in 2014. “I was from the Bronx. What I did was use my own family as the reference on how to portray my character.”

Spencer told Hers magazine that you have to do “what it is that you think is going to make you happy,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

“You really have to live life for you at that minute,” she said. “And just try to have fun. Be lighthearted and be happy while you’re here, because you never know when that time is going to end.”