Beverly Bentley

Beverly Bentley (February 26, 1930 – September 13, 2018) was an American actress born Beverly Claire Rentz in Atlanta, Georgia, whose career spanned from the Golden Age of Television in the 1950s through the first decade of the 21st century. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she relocated with her mother to Florida, where she studied drama at Sarasota High School before being forced to leave at age 16 for Pensacola. While working in a diner there, she encountered entertainer Arthur Godfrey, who was stationed at a nearby naval base as a Reservist.

Bentley later moved to New York City and reconnected with Godfrey, who invited her to appear regularly on his television program, where she held up signs for commercials as one of his "Little Godfreys." Godfrey coined the name "Beverly Bentley," believing it sounded better than her birth name, and she adopted it professionally. During this period she also served as hostess and fashion commentator on television game shows including Beat the Clock, The Big Payoff, and The Price Is Right, and worked as a hand model for perfume commercials. She briefly married advertising executive Alex Mumford and maintained relationships with several notable figures, including Orson Bean, Eddie Fisher, Andy Griffith, and Miles Davis, with whom she had a relationship lasting several years in the late 1950s.

Her stage career began off-Broadway, where she played Connie Bliss opposite James Earl Jones in Clifford Odets' The Big Knife. Her first lead role on Broadway came in 1963 with The Heroine, and additional Broadway productions included Romanoff and Juliet and The Lovers. She met Norman Mailer shortly after her Broadway debut that year and they married later in 1963. The marriage was turbulent; they became estranged in 1969 and divorced in 1980. They had two sons together, Stephen and Michael.

Alongside director Leo Garen, Bentley co-founded Act IV in Provincetown, a theater company that produced works by writers including Pirandello and LeRoi Jones and provided early opportunities to performers such as Al Pacino and Jill Clayburgh. In 1966, she played Lulu in Act IV's production of The Deer Park, a stage adaptation of Mailer's novel. That same year she settled in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she remained for the rest of her life.

Her film work included A Face in the Crowd (1957), Scent of Mystery (1960), Norman Mailer's trilogy Wild 90 (1968), Beyond the Law (1968), and Maidstone (1970), the cult horror film C.H.U.D. (1984), and The Golden Boys (2008). Her son Michael noted that she declined to sign a Hollywood contract, preferring not to be bound to the film industry, as theater remained her primary passion. Bentley died on September 13, 2018, at the age of 88.