Beverly Garland, Laura's Mom, Dies at 82

A B-movie actress with spontaneous appearances in movies and on T.V., and a cult movie following from the 1950's, Beverly Garland died Friday in her Beverly Hills Home. According to the LA Times, Garland's died, at age 82, following a lengthy illness.

I saw her play Fred Mac Murray's second wife on "My Three Sons." She also played Bing Crosby's wife in the short-lived "Bing Crosby Show."

Garland may be best known by cult movie fans of "D.O.A," "Swamp Woman," and "Not of This Earth."

Most of her 1950s movies were before my time, but self described as a woman who wasn't apt to play the sweet, lovable woman on film or T.V., she captured interest in her 50 year career span of television and movie appearances.

It seems like those actresses who dare to be real and not pour on the syrupy sweetness, especially in those days had a way of sticking with you. At least they did with me.

Every time I remember her showing up she was gutsy, a little coarse around the edges, and to the point. Those roles seemed to suit her well in a variety of films. Of acting in B-movies Beverly Garland has said,

"You don't have to act in these pictures. All you have to do is possess a good pair of lungs. I can scream with more variations from shrill to vibrato than any other girl in pictures."

Garland could scream and stumble with the best of them. She admits they didn't try to over-act, but in retrospect also had the insight to see how far the movie industry had come.

Garland continued her career showing up as the mother of three high risk television characters. All of them were women. She played the mother of...

- Laura Holt, played by Stephanie Zimbalist, on "Remington Steele" in 1982.

- Amanda King, actress Kate Jackson, in "Scarecrow and Mrs. King," in 1983.

- Lois Lane, played by Teri Hatcher, in 1993 in "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman."

You wouldn't expect anyone other than a Beverly Garland character to birth girls that turned out like those three challenging female television characters.

Beverly got her screen name from Richard Garland, to whom she was married for a couple of years. She was married to Fillmore Crank for over 30 years, until his death in 1999.