Beverly Garland

When she was four, the family moved south to Glendale, CA, and in 1931 she made her acting debut playing Cupid in a kindergarten play.

Born in Santa Cruz, California, Beverly Garland studied dramatics under Anita Arliss, the sister of renowned stage and screen star George Arliss. She acted in little theater in Glendale then in Phoenix after her family relocated to Arizona. Garland also worked in radio and appeared scantily clad in a few risqué shorts before making her feature film debut in a supporting part in D. O. A (1949). Her husbands include actor Richard Garland, and land developer Fillmore Crank, who built 2 hotels which bear her name.

According to Garland, she and John Crawford were acting together in 1953 in a play, Dark of the Moon, at the Hollywood Players Ring Theater, the place where she had met her then-husband, Richard Garland a few years earlier. Her best friend, Lorinne Crawford, was married to Crawford at the time. The Garlands would go to the Crawford's house, and Beverly and John Crawford would then go together to the theater and return after to rejoin their spouses at the Crawford home. One night they came home from the play and Beverly caught her husband in a near embrace with her best friend in the Crawford kitchen. He denied but shortly afterwards admitted to an affair. Both John Crawford and Beverly divorced their spouses immediately, with Beverly retaining her ex-husband's name because her career was rising at the time and she did not wish to endanger it with a name change.

Ms Garland has two very significant historical television "firsts": she was television's first policewoman as the star of Decoy (1957), and, more importantly, the series gave her the honor of becoming the first actress to star in a television dramatic series.

Best remembered by the public for her starring roles as Barbara Harper Douglas on My Three Sons (1960) and as Dorothy 'Dotty' West on Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983).

Mother Amelia "Milly" Scherer was of German ancestry and was a cosmetician; her father James was a crooner who thrived on one-night stands until the demands of marriage and family moved him into sales work. He died in an auto accident in 1961 in Riverside, CA.

Shared the same birthday with Julie Adams. Garland and Adams guest-starred on the same episode of Mannix (1967).

In The Mad Room (1969) her character was pregnant--so was she at the time, with her son James.

In the early 1970s, with husband Fillmore Crank, she opened the Beverly Garland's Howard Johnson's Resort Lodge, a 154-room hotel near Universal Studios.

Starting with Remington Steele (1982), she played mothers of three television women with hazardous lives; from the aforementioned series, Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist), Amanda King (Kate Jackson) of Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983) and Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993).

In 1983, Ms Garland received her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

In 1986 her Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983) co-star, Bruce Boxleitner, presented her with the Golden Boot Award.

Interviewed in "Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers: Writers, Producers, Directors, Actors, Moguls and Makeup" by Tom Weaver (McFarland 1988).

After her last guest-starring role on 7th Heaven (1996), she retired from acting at age 77.

After her husband of 39 years died in 1999, Beverly continued to operate the 255-room Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in North Hollywood (with the assistance of three of her four children).

Ms Garland guest-starred on a number of TV game shows, including The Guardian (2001), on CBS, and Weakest Link (2001), on NBC, and maintained her continuing roles on 7th Heaven (1996), on the WB (now the CW), and Port Charles (1997), on ABC, which began in the 1990s.

In 2001, in recognition of her 50 years in show business, the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters inducted her into its Hall of Fame.

As of November 2006 she was still residing in the dramatic California contemporary she and her husband purchased in the early 1960s. Recently redesigned by her decorator-daughter Carrington Garland, the Hollywood Hills mid-century house boasts spectacular city and canyon views that can be seen through the house from the street.