Beverly Garland

The sweat on B-movie sets

Beverly Fessenden didn't arrive in Hollywood to be a passive muse. In 1949, she made her film noir debut in D.O.A. under the name Beverly Campbell. But the industry would remember her by the surname of her first husband (Garland) and for a work ethic that bordered on the workaholic.

During the fifties she became Roger Corman's go-to actress. The director needed actresses who could shoot action scenes in a single take without complaining about the minuscule budget. In 1956 she starred in It Conquered the World and Not of This Earth. These were quick-turnaround movies shot in just a few days, and she brought a seriousness to them that the script didn't always deserve.

And the gamble paid off.

Garland didn't just scream in front of cardboard monsters. In 1954, she received an Emmy nomination for her work on Medic. It was an early recognition of an actress who understood television as a mass medium before the industry saw it clearly. Garland understood the craft as a mix of art and physical endurance.

Casey Jones's Badge

In 1957, the actress accepted a role that changed the rules of television in the United States. She starred in Decoy as Patricia Casey Jones. She became the first woman to star in a police drama in American television history. The series was shot on the streets of New York (unusual at the time) and featured an undercover officer who did not depend on a male rescue.

But the production lasted only one season of thirty-nine episodes. Sponsors of the era didn't know how to sell a show where a woman carried the weight of violence and the law. Despite the cancellation, the series stayed on the air through reruns for years. So Garland's face was etched in collective memory as that of a woman who never asked permission to shoot.

In 1959 she shot The Alligator People under suffocating heat in the Louisiana swamps.

That horror film was one of her last major big-screen roles before she retreated almost entirely to television. During the sixties she appeared in dozens of episodic productions such as The Fugitive and Gunsmoke. Her fee remained steady because producers knew Garland always showed up on set with her lines learned and a total commitment to hard work.

A Refuge in North Hollywood

In 1972 the actress decided to diversify her income so she wouldn't depend on the whims of casting directors. Together with her husband, Fillmore Crank, she opened the Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn in North Hollywood. The hotel became a gathering place for the industry and gave her the financial independence that many of her generation's actresses lost once they hit forty.

And she never stopped acting.

In 1969, she joined the cast of My Three Sons as Barbara Harper Douglas. It marked the start of a period in which Hollywood typecast her as a understanding but strong-willed mother. In 1983, she returned to a recurring role on Scarecrow and Mrs. King, playing the female lead's mother for nearly ninety episodes. Her screen presence was a guarantee of professional reliability.

In 2004, she made her final professional appearance on 7th Heaven, playing Ginger. By then she was an institution in California and kept full control of her hotel complex (which would later simply be called The Garland). In 2008, she died at her home in the Hollywood Hills at the age of eighty-two from natural causes. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located on the 6801 block of Hollywood Boulevard.