Kim Richards and Olivia Barash

Tonight, Hallmark is showing Escape to Witch Mountain and its sequel, Return from Witch Mountain, both starring Kim Richards. This brings back nice memories for me because Kim was one of the two great celebrity crushes of my early childhood.

The other was Olivia Barash. When I was a little boy in the 1970's and early 1980's, Kim and Olivia were on TV very frequently and I thought they were the two prettiest girls in the world.

Since I usually saw them in movies or reruns that were a few years old, they appeared to be the same age as me, but I was aware that they were older because I would sometimes see them in more up-to-date roles.

Kim seemed to have the more active acting career. I was a faithful Hello, Larry viewer, primarily because of her. The episode in which she let the blind kid feel under her shirt is one that I'm sure I'll remember until I die.

I remember that they also sometimes had cross-over episodes with Diff'rent Strokes and her character, Ruthie, would interact with Arnold and Willis and Kimberly.

I was aware that Kim was growing into a very hot young lady. What I didn't realize at the time was that she was the sister of Kyle Richards, who appeared on Down To Earth, one of my favorite shows from the 80's. I wouldn't make that connection until the late-90's, after the internet made learning so much easier. Later, I would be even more surprised, and a little dismayed, to learn that she and Kyle are the aunts of Paris Hilton.

I was not able to follow Olivia's development as thoroughly as I followed Kim's. I saw her in an episode of Alice in which she played Tommy's girlfriend and I can remember vividly her appearance in a very special (and, to me, very disturbing) Little House on the Prairie two-parter, but I mostly lost track of her. Maybe it was because our cable company started offering an expanded package of channels in 1986 and I just had so much more to watch.

Now, I know (thanks to the internet, again) that I did see her in later roles, but I just didn't realize it was her. Perhaps my failure to recognize her was due to a crucial gap in my observance of her career, but she did change in appearance a lot more than Kim did.

I re-watched Repo Man a few years ago just so I could look for Olivia. Knowing that it was her, I could see the resemblance, but I wasn't surprised that I hadn't been able to recognize her on earlier viewings. She was still very beautiful, but different. Apparently, she's also in Floundering (playing a character named Ruthie), but I've not gotten around to re-watching it.



Strange story: Kim and Olivia appeared together in the film Tuff Turf. I watched that movie (on cable, shortly after its theatrical run) when I was in high school primarily to see Kim (who looked fantastic), but I didn't recognize Olivia. I'm sure the movie would have meant so much more to me if I had.