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Beverly Wills
Wills and Tom Peters on the set of I Married Joan, 1954.
Born	Beverly Josephine Williams (1933-06-07)June 7, 1933 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Died	October 24, 1963(1963-10-24) (aged 30) Palm Springs, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actress
Spouses	Lee Bamber ​ ​(m. 1952; div. 1953)​ Alan Grossman ​ ​(m. 1954; div. 1958)​ Martin Colbert ​(m. 1960)​
Children	2

Beverly Wills (June 7, 1933 – October 24, 1963) was an American television and film actress.

Biography

She was born in 1933 as Beverly Josephine Williams in Los Angeles to actress and comedian Joan Davis and actor and writer Si Wills. Wills made her film debut in George White's Scandals (1945) when she was age 11. Mickey (1948) followed three years later.

In 1952, at age 18, Wills appeared with her mother and Jim Backus in the TV comedy I Married Joan (1952–1955). She played the younger sister of her real-life mother. After the series ended its run, Wills appeared in four more films, including Some Like It Hot (1959) and Son of Flubber (1963).

Wills married three times before the age of 30. Her first marriage was to Lee Bamber, a Pasadena fireman, in 1952. Bamber and Wills eloped to Carson City, Nevada. The couple divorced in 1953. She later married Alan Grossman on July 11, 1954; the couple had two sons. Wills and Grossman divorced, and she married Martin Colbert.

On October 24, 1963, Wills died in a house fire with her grandmother, Nina Davis, and both children from her second marriage, sons Guy (age 7) and Larry (age 4) Grossman. The fire started due to the 30-year-old Wills smoking in bed. Her mother, Joan, had died of a heart attack two years earlier at age 48.

Filmography

References

1. "Beverly Wills' Stage Goal: Be Herself". The Milwaukee Sentinel. July 4, 1948. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
2. Bloom, Ken; Vlastnik, Frank; Lithgow, John (2007). Sitcoms: The 101 Greatest TV Comedies of All Time. Black Dog Publishing. p. 177. ISBN 978-1-57912-752-7.
3. ^ "Fire Kills Joan Davis' Relatives". The Evening Independent. October 24, 1963. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
4. "Joan Davis' Daughter Elopes". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. June 27, 1952. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
5. "Beverly Wills, Actress, Weds". Herald-Journal. July 12, 1954. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
6. "Fire Kills 4 Members Of Joan Davis Family". St Petersburg Times. October 25, 1963. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
7. "Fire Kills Joan Davis' Kin". The Milwaukee Journal. October 24, 1963. Retrieved July 13, 2012.
8. Tucker, David C. (2007). The Women Who Made Television Funny: Ten Stars of 1950s Sitcoms. McFarland. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-7864-2900-4.

External links

• Beverly Wills at IMDb

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• Actresses from Los Angeles
• American film actresses
• American television actresses
• Deaths from fire in the United States
• 20th-century American actresses
• Accidental deaths in California
• American screen actor, 1930s birth stubs