Betty Garrett

Betty Garrett (May 23, 1919 – February 12, 2011) was an American actress, singer, dancer, and comedian whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television across more than six decades. Born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, to Elizabeth Octavia (née Stone) and Curtis Garrett, she moved with her family to Seattle, Washington, shortly after her birth, where her mother managed the sheet music department at Sherman Clay and her father worked as a traveling salesman. Her parents eventually divorced due to her father's alcoholism and financial irresponsibility, and Garrett and her mother lived in a succession of residential hotels to reduce costs. When Garrett was eight, her mother remarried and the family relocated to Regina, Saskatchewan, where her stepfather worked in the meat-packing industry. After her mother discovered her new husband was involved in a sexual relationship with his male assistant, she and Garrett returned to Seattle.

Garrett attended the Annie Wright School in Tacoma on a full scholarship. The school had no drama department, so she organized musical productions and plays for special occasions herself. Following a senior-year performance in Twelfth Night, a bishop encouraged her to pursue a stage career. Simultaneously, her mother's friend arranged an interview with Martha Graham, who was touring Seattle, and Graham recommended Garrett for a scholarship at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. Garrett and her mother arrived in Manhattan in the summer of 1936, and she began classes that September. Her instructors included Graham and Anna Sokolow for dance, Sandy Meisner for drama, Lehman Engel for music, and Margaret Webster for Shakespearean classics. Fellow students included Daniel Mann and Richard Conte.

During summer months, Garrett performed in the Borscht Belt, working alongside Danny Kaye, Jerome Robbins, Carol Channing, Imogene Coca, and Jules Munshin, and developing her singing and dancing abilities. She joined Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre as an understudy in its final stage production, a short-lived staging of Danton's Death, which brought her into contact with Joseph Cotten, Ruth Ford, Martin Gabel, and Arlene Francis. She also performed with Martha Graham's dance company at Carnegie Hall and the Alvin Theatre, sang at the Village Vanguard, and appeared in satirical and political revues staged by the Flatbush Arts Theatre, which later renamed itself the American Youth Theatre and moved to Manhattan.

Garrett's Broadway career began in 1942 with the revue Of V We Sing, which ran for 76 performances. That same year she was cast in Harold Rome's revue Let Freedom Sing, which closed after only eight performances, but producer Mike Todd saw the show and signed her to understudy Ethel Merman and play a small role in the 1943 Cole Porter musical Something for the Boys. When Merman fell ill during the run, Garrett stepped into the lead for a week, drawing the attention of producer Vinton Freedley, who cast her in Jackpot, a Vernon Duke and Howard Dietz musical starring Nanette Fabray and Allan Jones. After that show closed quickly, she toured with her nightclub act before appearing in Laffing Room Only, which also closed on Broadway but played extended runs in Detroit and Chicago. She then returned to New York for Call Me Mister, which reunited her with Harold Rome, Lehman Engel, and Jules Munshin. Her performance earned critical acclaim and the Donaldson Award, and prompted Al Hirschfeld to caricature her in The New York Times. The role led directly to her being signed to a one-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer by Louis B. Mayer.

Garrett arrived at MGM in January 1947 and made her film debut as nightclub performer Shoo Shoo O'Grady in Big City, directed by Norman Taurog and co-starring George Murphy and Robert Preston. Mayer renewed her contract, and she subsequently appeared in the musicals Words and Music, On the Town, Take Me Out to the Ball Game, and Neptune's Daughter. She and her husband, actor Larry Parks, later appeared at the London Palladium and toured the United Kingdom with their nightclub act, capitalizing on the British success of The Jolson Story. The tour proved successful enough that they returned to the country three times, though the growing popularity of television eventually diminished the music hall circuit. In 1955, Garrett was cast opposite Janet Leigh and Jack Lemmon in My Sister Eileen, a musical remake of a 1940 theatrical adaptation of stories by Ruth McKenney, after Judy Holliday withdrew from the project due to a contract dispute. The following year, she and Parks replaced Holliday and Sydney Chaplin in the Broadway production of Bells Are Ringing during the leads' vacation from the show.

Over the following two decades, Garrett worked sporadically, appearing on Broadway in the short-lived play A Girl Could Get Lucky with Pat Hingle, a musical adaptation of Spoon River Anthology, and making guest appearances on The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, The Lloyd Bridges Show, and The Fugitive. Her Broadway activity during this period also included productions that the verified database records as part of a stage career stretching from 1938 to 2001, encompassing Follies, Meet Me in St. Louis, the play Her Supporting Cast, and other productions.

Garrett's career gained renewed prominence in the 1970s through two major television sitcoms. In the fall of 1973, she joined All in the Family as Irene Lorenzo, the politically liberal Irish-American wife of Archie Bunker's neighbor Frank. The role had initially gone to Sada Thompson, who asked to be released after taping one episode, opening the part for Garrett. Several connections linked her to the production: Norman Lear had been the publicity man for Call Me Mister, writers Bernard West and Mickey West knew her from the American Youth Theatre, and Jean Stapleton had been in the cast of Bells Are Ringing. Irene, a Catholic whose household competence and progressive views frequently clashed with Archie's sensibilities, later worked alongside Archie at his place of employment driving a forklift and was paid less than the man she replaced but more than Archie. Garrett remained with the series from 1973 through 1975 and won the 1974 Golden Globe for her performance.

The following year, while performing her one-woman show Betty Garrett and Other Songs in Westwood, California, she was offered the role of landlady Edna Babish in Laverne & Shirley. The character was a five-time divorcée who eventually married Laverne's father Frank. Although Garrett reportedly felt she was not given enough to do on the show, she valued the occasions when the plot incorporated her musical talents. When the series was extended beyond its intended final season in 1981, Garrett had to withdraw because of a prior commitment.

In later years, Garrett appeared in television series including The Golden Girls, Boston Public, Becker, and Grey's Anatomy, and continued to work in Broadway plays and revivals. Her stage career, which had begun in 1938, extended through 2001, reflecting a professional longevity that encompassed virtually every major performance medium of the twentieth century.