If there was a patron saint of Mystery Science Theater 3000, it was Beverly Garland. Oh, Gypsy would wax rhapsodic about Richard Basehart. And of course there were the directors—Bert I. Gordon, Roger Corman, Ed Wood, and the others. Even Leonard Maltin deserves mention in this context. But Beverly Garland uplifted the movies she was in, and what’s more, she seemed genuinely nice about it all. Sweet, kind, and understanding—she knew those movies weren’t good, and she knew the writers had no animosity toward her personally. Why should they? She was Beverly Garland! That may not be Kim Catrall, but it still means something!
She was also a hard worker. The three films she did that ended up on MST3K were all made in the same year, for one thing. She also played the mothers of Laura Holt, Mrs. King, and Lois Lane—three feisty, independent women of ’80s and ’90s TV. She has over 150 TV credits and over forty movie credits. Her first movie was the original D.O.A., from 1949, where she was fourth billed (under Beverly Campbell, her name at the time), and she started on TV in 1950. Her last performance was 54 years later on Seventh Heaven.
In some ways, Garland set a standard for feisty, independent women. Oh, she played her share of wives and mothers, but even then, there seemed to generally be an iron core to them. Gunslinger is a lousy movie, but it’s a lousy movie where Garland’s character is in as much control as anyone is in a Corman movie. A lot of the stuff she made over her career was, let’s be real, terrible. But as I said, you could always count on Beverly Garland to be just a little bit better than the lousy material and as good as the good material, and that’s more than a lot of people can say.
She has one of those iconic TV careers that makes you a bit surprised because of the shows she didn’t do. No appearances on Love Boat or Murder, She Wrote. On the other hand, Love American Style and Ironside and Lux Video Theater. Just vast quantities of those shows that had just about everyone on them sooner or later. The New Perry Mason, the old Perry Mason, and The Twilight Zone. More Westerns than you can shake a stick at, going back to her second TV performance on The Lone Ranger.
Is she strictly horror? Possibly not; Beverly Garland encompasses all genres. But she did work with Corman repeatedly, and that gets her close enough in my book. And Science Fiction Theater, and that Twilight Zone episode, and she certainly did more than a few cheesy horror movies back in the ’50s. If she doesn’t turn up sooner or later on the new MST3K episodes, I for one will be shocked and appalled. I think she’d be a little sad, too; she always did seem to have a soft spot for the show.
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