Beverly Garland: 'Queen of the Bs' and one of Roger Corman's favourite leading ladies

In the 1950s, Beverly Garland was one of the most active of B-movie heroines ("You could call me 'Queen of the Bs,'" she once said), and her performances in horror and sci-fi films as a no-nonsense character, usually with plenty of grit, won her a large following among cult-movie enthusiasts. She was a favourite leading lady of the producer and director Roger Corman, a close friend ("We dated a little – nothing serious"), starring in such Corman vehicles as Swamp Women and Not of This Earth.

When asked her theory about the enduring appeal of such films as The Alligator People and It Conquered the World, Garland replied: "Because we took all of this work very seriously. We never 'camped'. We were dedicated and presented it honestly. Because of that, when I have to make love to a man who's turning into an alligator, it's so sincere and so vibrant that people get caught up in the presentation and really appreciate our effort. At least, that's my theory." Later she became a noted character actress, winning plaudits for her mother roles in Pretty Poison (1968) and It's My Turn (1980).

Born Beverly Fessenden in 1926 in Santa Cruz, California, she studied drama at Glendale College, where she was tutored by Anita Arliss, the sister of the distinguished actor George Arliss, and during her senior year she appeared on her own local radio show, Story Time. After graduation, she gained sporadic stage experience while working as a waitress, lift operator and mail-girl: "So many girls then", she said, "grew up with the conditioning that you graduated from college, then got married, had children and took care of the house. It never entered my head as a child that that was my goal. I wanted to be a career woman."

In 1945 she eloped with Bob Campbell, and though the marriage lasted only a few months, she adopted the name Beverly Campbell for her first two films, George Cukor's drama about fashion models, A Life of Her Own (1950), and Rudolf Maté's tense film noir, DOA (1950). She tookher final name in 1952 when she began a four-year marriage to the actor Richard Garland, who later starred in Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957).

Garland's career hit an arid patch after DOA, due, she later stated, to being blackballed. "DOA was up for an Academy Award, and the producers were very excited," she said. "I was asked by someone in public relations whether I thought the picture would win an Oscar, and I said, 'No, I don't think so'. Hey, I was new in the business and figured they wanted an honest answer. Wrong! I was perceived as an ingrate, and I couldn't get a movie for three years."

She returned to the screen with roles in two good thrillers, Jack Arnold's The Glass Web (1953), filmed in 3-D starring Edward G. Robinson, and Fred Sears' The Miami Story (1954), in which she was the lover of reformed gangster-turned-detective Barry Sullivan. She acted prodigiously on television, winning an Emmy nomination for her portrayal of a leukaemia patient in the series Medic (1955), and appeared in several low-budget exploitation movies, such as Problem Girls and The Neanderthal Man (both 1953), The Rocket Man and Killer Leopard (both 1954), and Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956). "As an actress, the main thing is to keep working," she said, according to the film historian Tom Weaver, who also wrote: "Her list of titles is unmatched by any other Fifties genre actress."

Swamp Women (1955) was her first film for Roger Corman, and in it Garland was top-billed as Vera, a tough thief who escapes from prison with two cohorts (Marie Windsor and Jill Jarmyn) and flees through the Louisiana bayou. Remembering the dilapidated hotel at which the cast stayed, Garland commented, "Roger was always very professional, except when it came to putting us up in a good hotel or giving us a decent meal. He didn't really have any money to speak of when he made those pictures, so you can't really fault him for trying to save whatever he could."

In Corman's It Conquered the World (1956), Garland was the wife of a scientist (Lee Van Cleef) who ill-advisedly befriends a creature from Venus intent on taking over the world. The film is regarded as a camp classic primarily for its outrageously inept monster, which has earned the nicknames "the Cucumber Critter" or "the Carrot Monster". "When I got my first look at it," recalled Garland, I said, 'Roger! I could bop that monster over the head with my handbag!' "

Gunslinger (1956), in which Garland played a sheriff's wife who takes over his job when he is killed, was the actress's favourite of her Corman films. "I loved the part. I like to get down and dirty. I had some good fights, I got to wear pants, I got to carry a gun, and I loved working with my leading man, John Ireland." Garland's other films for Corman were Naked Paradise (1957), shot in Hawaii, and Not of This Earth (1957), in which an alien comes to Earth looking for fresh blood to take back to his planet where years of atomic warfare have left the inhabitants needing daily transfusions. Garland later expressed some resentment that when Corman moved into bigger budgeted productions he hired none of his earlier B-movie players.

"He dropped us all. There were times when I really needed a picture, needed to work, and Roger was never around. I might not have done a later picture for him, but I sure would like to have been asked."

Garland's strongest role in an A-picture was in The Joker is Wild (1957), the story of nightclub entertainer Joe E. Lewis (Frank Sinatra), and his battle to re-establish his career after his vocal chords were slashed by gangsters. Garland played the wife of Lewis's devoted accompanist (Eddie Albert). "I think if I'd stayed in Hollywood to build my career after that film I might have climbed a few more steps up the ladder in the motion picture area," she said. "Instead I went to New York and did a TV series called Decoy, about a policewoman. It was syndicated instead of being sold to a network, and it was not shown in California or New York."

The series is now of historical interest – it was the first to feature a policewoman as the leading character. Itran from 1957 to 1959, but it was a time when television was still regardedsuspiciously by film-company executives, who did not expect their starsto appear in the medium. "When I came back to Hollywood after a year in New York it was almost like starting all over again."

In 1960 Garland married Filmore Crank, a widowed land developer with two children. The couple had two more children in a union that lasted until Crank's death in 1999. They lived in a beautiful house with an ocean view, and in 1972 the couple opened the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in North Hollywood. Garland continued to take occasional character roles, notably the stern mother who is murdered by her psychotic daughter (Tuesday Weld) in Noel Black's striking black comedy, Pretty Poison (1968), another of Garland's cult movies. "It came out a few years ahead of its time," she reflected.

Television was to play an important part in the rest of Garland's career, with guest roles in dramas, soap operas and series, and from 1969 to 1972 she successfully portrayed the wife of Fred MacMurray in the popular comedy series My Three Sons. "I was a great fan of Mary Tyler Moore on The Dick Van Dyke Show. To me, she was the only woman in a situation comedy who spoke her mind. When I heard that Fred MacMurray's widower on My Three Sons was going to get married, I thought I could bring some of those give-and-take qualities to the show. My agent said, 'You've been in Westerns and horror movies. You've played whores and alcoholics. Do you think they're going to hire you to play a nice sweet lady?' But I did go on the interview, and I met Fred MacMurray. Normally he was quiet, but he opened up with me, and we talked and talked, and the producers thought, 'They're a good match. He's comfortable around her.' So I was cast."

Garland's later films included Claudia Weill's witty romantic comedyIt's My Turn (1980), in which Jill Clayburgh and Michael Douglas strikeup a relationship when her father plans to marry his mother (Garland). In 2001, to commemorate more than 50 years in show business, Garland was given a star on Hollywood Boulevard's walk of fame. From 1997 to 2004 she was a regular performer on the TV series 7th Heaven, and until recently she and three of her children were running the 255-room Beverly Garland Holiday Inn.

Tom Vallance

Beverly Fessenden, actress: born Santa Cruz, California 17 October 1929; married 1945 Bob Campbell (marriage dissolved), 1951 Richard Garland (marriage dissolved 1953), 1960 Filmore Crank (died 1999; one son, one daughter, two stepchildren); died Los Angeles 5 December 2008.