Earlier this week I had dinner with a friend who told me a couple of Christmases ago, he was in Paris drinking champagne with Olivia DeHavilland at her apartment.

Well, I’ve never done that, but once I was in the same convention hall with Beverly Garland.

I was working on an Alzheimer’s documentary, so me and the rest of the crew were covering an AARP convention in Atlanta, to get some sound-bites on the subject. The day had been a tight schedule and we got there as the big pow-wow was dispersing.

Making my way through the crowd, I picked up a crumpled activity program from the floor. I noticed that Beverly had been keynote speaker just a few minutes before.

The images of her, perky-titted and fighting space aliens, flooded my brain. Memories of those Saturday afternoons in front of the TV, and weeknights when the family would go to the drive-in, poured kerosene on my ardor, and a kundalini rush of film-geek fandom consumed me. I jumped on one of the hall’s ass-buster chairs and searched the crowd, but had no idea what she looked like 30 years after The Alligator People.

So, I never got to speak to her — didn’t even get a glimpse. But I can still feel the rush.

While many leading ladies in 1950s sci-fi would stand in the corner and shriek, Beverly Garland kicked ass against invading extra-terrestrials. When the Big Bubba who looked like a giant cucumber in It Conquered the World was …er… conquering the World, Beverly threw a shotgun in the back of her Caddy convertible and went off to plug it with buckshot (but before pulling the trigger, she hisses “You’re ugly!!” to the creature).

So I stumbled upon a DVD at the library called Drive-In Movie Memories. The video is so-so but it does have soundbites from Beverly Garland, who balances her frame of reference for those films with humor and matter-of-factness. Best part: she tells the interviewer she can really scream and gives a sample. SHE AIN’T LYIN’.

An armed and leggy Beverly Garland in SWAMP WOMEN

Whenever I drive north on 101 in L.A. to merge with the Ventura Freeway, I get a certain warm, bosom-y charge out of driving past the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn.

Here’s to you, Beverly.

BTW, did I mention she was righteously brilliant as the secretary in D.O.A.?

Doug from PostModernJoan

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