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Low Tech Cuisine

Title: Low Tech Cuisine
Source: TV Guide
Author: John T.D. Keyes, editor-in-chief (2005) evalu8.org
Date: August 5th, 1984

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Caption to photo: Beverly Garland - Kate Jackson’s mom on Scarecrow and Mrs. King - knows exactly how to handle the L.A. Olympics crowds. As the co-owner of two hotels , she’ll bolster Games enthusiasts with copious amounts of fresh California Cuisine.
Caption to photo: ‘Whisk and Spoon’ Beverly Garland cooks it simple

Every decade or so, Beverly Garland returns as TV’s quintessential homemaker, always there in the background sending the kids off to school with a balanced breakfast and reappearing at the end of the show to put dinner on the table when the real star gets home from work.

In the mid-’60s, she toiled as wife and mother Ellie Collins on The Big Crosby Show. In the early 70’s, she was Barbara Harper-Douglas, Fred MacMurray’s long awaited second wife on My Three Sons. Now Garland is up to her apron strings again, with CBS’s Scarecrow and Mrs. King, playing Dotty West, mother to Kate Jackson and Grandmother to two of TV’s cutest tykes.

As usual, she says with a laugh, “this is not a show that’s being written about Dotty West. If you want to find her , she’s probably off in the kitchen trussing the chicken.”

Nonetheless, it’s acting work - and Garland likes to think of herself as an actress. “It’s no good to be an actress who sits in the house doing needlepoint and then goes to the ladies’ club and says, ‘I’m an actress, you know.’ It doesn’t hold water. To fulfill myself, I need to be a working actress. Thank God, Kate Jackson needs a mother.”

But, had Scarecrow not come along , the odds are very good you still wouldn’t have found Beverly Garland sitting around the house doing needlepoint. For years now, acting aside, she’s been one of Hollywood’s busiest women, and with the Olympics in Los Angeles right now, she’s finding things even busier. She and her husband, real estate untrepreneur Filmore Crank, co-own two California hotels, one in the state Capitol, Sacramento, and one in North Hollywood, right next to one of those notorious freeways that have been jammed with all that Olympic traffic. “Summer’s always good for Southern California,” she says, “but this year should hold us very well.”

Garland doesn’t say this in the capacity of some absentee landlord raking it in and banking it near the villa in Europe - “though that’s how we envisioned it when we decided to build 11 years ago,” she says. Ever since their first manager failed to meet their administrative standards, Garland’s been intimately involved in the L.A. hotel. (Their oldest son manages the one in Sacramento.)

Garlad, 57, is also honorary mayor of North Hollywood, where she lives, and though her duties basically consist of “opening banks and cutting ribbons,” she takes it seriously. She also makes time for charity work and the furthering of tourism in California.

Meanwhile, like her TV characters, there’s been some home life to squeeze in. Crank brought two children to their 1960 marriage and together they’ve had two more. “I was always ‘mother,’ but every now and then mother would disappear and do some television or movie job.” Then, as now, “I cooked every meal; did the washing and the ironing. I mean I’m a mother first - actress second.”

Born in Santa Cruz, Calif., Garland has always favord local fruits and vegetables in her cooking. She’s a fan of the imaginative chef’s who, 10 years ago, perceived the state as a restaurant wasteland and have jazzed up the scene considerably since. “There was a time,” she says, “when, if you really wanted to eat, you had to go to San Francisco or else forget it.”

But, as California cuisine has become more eclectic, some California kids haven’t kept pace. Like Garland’s (two are still at home): “Jimmy wants macaroni and cheese, tuna casserole and canned peas. We have cases of canned peas. Carrington wants yogurt, sunflower seeds and no meat.”

When she and Crank aren’t commited to a Hollywood function that’s usually more public relations than meal, Garland likes to entertain at home. Rather than play host at a restaurant, “I think it’s much more relaxing to have friends come to my house, take off their shoes, put up their feet and have a glass of wine and talk. Otherwise, in a restaurant, you have people hovering about and it’s ‘Let me tell you about the special of the day.’ Of course, Filmore feels it’s better to take them out so I don’t have to be in the kitchen. But I don’t mind.”

With visitors - at the hotel or at home - Garland knows what she’d serve the next group of close friends: “The summer Olympics are the time for light and nutritious food. We in Los Angeles have the best produce in the world. Here’s my Olympic recipe for good eating this summer.”

Said like a mayor, a TV star and a mother.