Actress Beverly Garland died 5 December 2008 after a lengthy illness. Born Beverly Lucy Fessenden on 17 October 1926 in Santa Cruz, California, she was a B-movie actress who went on to play Fred MacMurray’s second wife in eight episodes of the tv series My Three Sons (1969-72). Her first screen role was in D.O.A. (1950), and most recently, she appeared in nine episodes of 7th Heaven between 1997 and 2004.
The New York Times obituary notes that she “gained something of a cult status for playing tough, hard women in pictures like The Alligator People (1959) and Roger Corman films like Gunslinger (1956), It Conquered the World (1956), and Naked Paradise (1957).” The Times then quotes a 1985 interview with her in Fangoria magazine: “I never considered myself very much of a passsive kind of actress. I was never very comfortable in love scenes, never comfortable playing a sweet, lovable lady.”
Her genre film appearances include: If (2003), The Mad Room (1969), Twice-Told Tales (1963), Not of This Earth (1957), Swamp Women (1955), The Rocket Man (1954), and The Neanderthal Man (1953). On television, she appeared in: Spider-Man 1997), six episodes of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1996-97), Hellfire (1995), Wide World Mystery (1975), Planet of the Apes (1974), two episodes of The Wild Wild West (1967 and 1969), six episodes of Disneyland (1959-67), Thriller (1960), The Twilight Zone (1960), and two episodes of Science Fiction Theatre (1955 and 1956).
At age 18, she was briefly married to Bob Campbell. She married and divorced actor Richard Garland (keeping his name) in the 1950s, and then married real estate developer Fillmore Crank in 1960 (he predeceased her, in 1999). Together, Garland and Crank built a Mission-style hotel in North Hollywood, now called Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn. She is survived by two children (Carrington Goodman and James Crank), two step-children (Cathleen and Fillmore, Jr.), eight grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.