Betty Garrett, Actress, Singer and Co-Star of Two Classic TV Comedies
Betty Garrett, an actress known for roles in popular MGM musicals and the television comedies All in the Family and LaVerne & Shirley, died February 12, 2011, at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. She was 91.
According to news reports, Garrett had been in good health and taught her usual musical comedy class at Theater West, the nonprofit organization she helped found, on Wednesday night, but Friday checked into the hospital with heart trouble and died with her family at her side the following morning.
Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on May 23, 1919, Garrett moved to Seattle with her parents soon afterward. Her father died when she was two. When she demonstrated talent as a singer and actress, her mother brought her to New York City at age 17 when she earned a scholarship to the renowned Neighborhood Playhouse
Garret made her stage debut in the 1938 production Danton’s Death at Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. After many other acting and dancing jobs, she moved to Los Angeles when she signed a contract with MGM.
She quickly found work in several of the studio’s musicals, including Neptune’s Daughter and On the Town and Take Me Out to the Ballgame, both with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra.
Her movie career was interrupted when the House Un-American Activities Committee compelled her husband, actor Academy Award-nominated Larry Parks, to testify about his earlier membership in the Communist Party.
Parks admitted that he had joined the Communist Party in 1941 and left in 1944 or 1945. When he was pressured to name other members of the party, Parks pleaded not to be an informer. He agreed to testify fully in executive session.
After Parks testified MGM dropped her, and she received no film offers until she co-starred with Jack Lemmon and Janet Leigh in the 1955 musical version of My Sister Eileen.
With their employment prospects dimmed, Garrett and Parks went on the road with a musical act that brought them success in Las Vegas, London and other cities. In later years Parks became a home builder. He died in 1975.
Garrett segued into television and garnered acclaim with roles in All in the Family, as the chatty friend of Edith Bunker who duels with Archie, and Laverne and Shirley, as a landlady who married Laverne’s father.
In 2003 she earned a Primetime Emmy nomination for a guest role on the comedy series Becker.
She also continued to appear on Broadway, including parts in Spoon River Anthology in 1963 and Meet Me in St. Louis in 1989. She was back on Broadway in 2001 in a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies.
In 1998, she published her autobiography, Betty Garrett and Other Songs, which was the title of her one-woman show.
She also taught and appeared in plays at Workshop West, which she helped found in the late 1950s.
Survivors include two sons and a granddaughter.