TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1963)

Beverly, Ross Martin (I.) and Sebastian Cabot have a great time on CBS-TV's weekly "Stump the Stars." The cry of the day for any TV producer anxious to make a success of a new series is, "Get me Beverly Garland!" Blond, vivacious Bev has appeared in the pilots of 12 television shows this season. And 11 were sold. But making things move, including TV products, is nothing new for Beverly. The very earth shook when she arrived in the world. . . . "I'm not sure I can really take credit for it," laughed Beverly, whose CBS panel show, "Stump the Stars," is seen Monday nights at 10:30 est, "but when I was born in Santa Cruz, California, it was in the midst of an earthquake. The nurse carried me in to my mother because they were moving everyone out of the hospital. Mom looked at me and said, 'You've brought me the wrong baby. The doctor told me I would have a boy. This isn't Jimmy.' " It was weeks before Mrs. James Fessenden accepted the fact there was no "junior" in the family. . . . While on the subject of names, Beverly made it clear that she's very pleased with her married name of Mrs. Fillmore Pajeau Crank. "It has," she said, her eyes twinkling, "a ring to it. When I go into stores and charge something, invariably salesgirls will say to me, 'Well, you don't look like a crank.' "... Good-natured Beverly has been migrating all her life. From Santa Cruz her family went to San Francisco, then to Glendale, California, on to Phoenix, Arizona, and finally to Los Angeles. Her husband's a builder, and as soon as they get a house in "shape," they sell it. So she's still on the move. "We've had six homes in less than two years," she explained, "and in between we've had two 'temporary' places in Palm Springs. I just make sure to keep my track shoes handy. As for possessions, I learned long ago not to attach importance to objects and things that can be replaced. And even if they can't be — they're not important compared to human or animal life." . . . Beverly has been married for nearly three years to Crank, a widower. She gets along fine with her stepchildren (Kathleen, 18; Smokey, 14), she says, because "I can talk faster — and louder. We're very strict," she admitted, "but it's paying off because they're great kids. My daughter calls me Mother, but my son usually says, 'Hey you,' or 'What do you think?' That's all right, too, because it means he thinks enough of me to ask my opinion. When I married Fillmore, I told the children that the most important thing was their respect and that if I got their love that would be an added bonus. But I have a feeling that I've finally got that." . . . Beverly isn't getting too fond of her hilltop home because, she says, "That look is in Fillmore's eyes again. Moving this time may pose a little problem, however. In the back yard we buried my son's pet rat. Over the grave is the marker, 'Here Lies George, A Rat.' I've seen a few people look peculiarly at it. I'm sure they think we've buried an agent, and I just know that whoever buys the house will dig up the grave before signing the papers." . . . There are those who know Miss Garland best who choose to believe that the earth really did shake because of her arrival, though there are a few stick-in-the-mud geologists who steadfastly attribute the quake to slippage of the unpredictable San Andreas seismic fault. In any event, since arriving amidst a pile of rubble, Beverly has moved to the top of the heap in the entertainment world. She's appeared in more than fifty television shows, including episodes of "The Twilight Zone," "Checkmate," "The Nurses" and "Dr. Kildare." Beverly also stars as a policewoman in a nationally syndicated series, "Decoy," most of it shot on location in New York City. She has appeared in over twenty-five features films, including "D.O.A.," "Desperate Hours," "The Joker Is Wild" and, recently released, "The Hate Within." She can portray anyone from a tough policewoman to a fragile glamour girl. It all began while she attended Glendale Junior High. There she studied dramatics under Anita Arliss, sister of the renowned English actor George Arliss. With an eye on Broadway, she financed herself the hard way — with no help from home. She worked as a drug store clerk, an elevator operator in a department store, a model and a waitress in a Hungarian restaurant. "I picked up some good recipes there," she adds. "In fact, I do 'almost all the cooking at home." After landing a role in the road company of "Happy Birthday" starring Miriam Hopkins, she got her first film role ("D.O.A." with Edmund O'Brien) when the show ended its tour in Los Angeles. Since then she's been kept very busy answering that incessant call: "Get me Beverly!" . . . It's a great life, indeed, when you're in demand in the field of your choice. And it's nice to see someone succeed who really tried hard — especially when it's someone like Bev.