Actress and Local Hotel Owner Beverly Garland Dead at 82

If you've ever driven past the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in North Hollywood you may have wondered just who Beverly Garland was.

She was, in fact, not just the hotel owner, but a longtime actress whose career "spanned more than 50 years and began with a supporting role in the 1950 film noir classic D.O.A." explains today's LA Times obit. She "appeared in about 40 films and scores of television shows" and may best be remembered as the matriarch in the popular sitcom My Three Sons, as well as the main mom on other shows like Remington Steele, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. According to her bio on the hotel's website, "In 1957, [Garland] made television history, becoming both the first actress to star in the title role of a dramatic series and becoming television’s first policewoman when she played NYPD officer Casey Jones in Decoy."

In addition to her long-running television career, Garland earned acclaim as a cult icon for her work in Roger Corman B-movies in the 50s such as Gunslinger, It Conquered the World, Naked Paradise, Not of This Earth, and Swamp Women.

The Santa Cruz-born and Glendale-raised actress got into the hotel game in 1972 with her third husband, developer Fillmore Crank. Per the Times: "In 1972, the couple built their mission-style hotel in North Hollywood, now called Beverly Garland's Holiday Inn, which she remained involved in running. They also built a hotel in Sacramento that bore Garland's name in the '80s but later sold it." Because of her contribution to show business and her prominence in the community the City of Los Angeles declared January 19, 2001 "Beverly Garland Day in Los Angeles."

Garland died at her Hollywood Hills home Friday after a long illness. She was 82.