Real-Life Job Is Far From a Bit Part

Fans have known actress Beverly Garland in scores of B-movie and television roles over the years, including Miss Foster in the 1950 mystery “D.O.A.” and as Fred MacMurray’s wife when the TV bachelor dad remarried in “My Three Sons.”

But for much of her career, Garland has also played a real-life role as owner-operator of Beverly Garland’s Holiday Inn.

This is not a bit part in which a celebrity lends her name to a business, but a real day-to-day job as an owner and decision-maker of the 255-room hotel on Vineland Avenue that bears her name.

The hotel--listed as a landmark in a Times guide to North Hollywood in 1997--is just two exits north of Universal Studios on the Hollywood Freeway, with a view of Universal City from some guest rooms.

Garland and her late husband, real estate developer Fillmore Crank, hired a management company some years ago to tend to the day-to-day minutiae of running the hotel, which has a staff of 85.

But Garland says she is still on the job for a full eight hours daily. Except when she’s acting, that is--she has recurring roles in the ABC-TV soap opera “Port Charles” and in “Seventh Heaven” on the WB Network. Even with a management company in place, she said, there are daily decisions that call for the owner’s voice and certain duties she relishes--like greeting the many tour buses that arrive at the hotel with guests from all over the country.

“We get a lot of people from the Midwest and the East,” she said. ‘The tour buses like to stop here because we’re close to Universal Studios and we’re convenient for a lot of other tourist attractions in Southern California--and because we have plenty of parking for buses.”

But long before Garland and Crank could afford the luxury of a management company, they were the new owners of a hotel--established in 1972--in which they were involved up to their elbows in the day-to-day chores.

Garland credits Crank with being the business brains behind the hotel, saying she never gave a thought to being a businesswoman, but became a hotel owner through a combination of happenstance and her husband’s business acumen.

“Fillmore wanted to build an apartment building here,” Garland said, explaining that she and her husband bought the land from the late Gene Autry with just that in mind.

But the late baseball manager Casey Stengel was a friend of the family and, on a visit one day, toured the site and suggested to Crank and Garland that they build a hotel instead of an apartment building.

“Casey made it sound like all we would have to do would be sit back” and collect the profits, Garland recalls.

During construction, Garland and her husband learned that the hotel business can be fraught with headaches.

“We lost eight floors of drapes and two floors of televisions before we opened,” she said. It taught her that hotel construction sites are popular with thieves.

Soon after they opened--as a Howard Johnson’s with 155 rooms--a flu outbreak decimated the hotel staff. Garland found herself in the laundry room, wrestling bundles of towels and sheets into washers and dryers, then folding the laundry. Meanwhile, her husband made beds and cleaned rooms.

All the while, Garland and Crank were raising four children, two of their own and two from his previous marriage. All four children have worked at the hotel at one time or another, she said, and are still involved from time to time.

Garland, who describes herself as an actress first and an entrepreneur second, said having a management company on hand allows her to take time from the hotel for acting roles. But she said she’s always there for any important meetings about marketing, strategy, business plans or major expenditures, explaining that such meetings are arranged around her schedule if she’s on an acting job.

The Valley hotel business has been healthy lately, Garland said, with her hotel--now a Holiday Inn which includes a conference center, theater, tennis courts and other amenities--drawing a substantial number of guests through bus tours (she’s a spokeswoman for the National Tour Assn.) as well as from touring musicians. Local groups use the hotel often for meetings and events, she said.

The bus tours and musicians are drawn by the hotel’s location and its plentiful bus parking, Garland says, noting that many popular musicians travel with bus-borne backup entourages that can’t always find adequate parking. Parking is plentiful at Garland’s hotel because she has plenty of room--a seven-acre site that takes a few minutes to drive around at the posted 5-mph speed limit.

Alan X. Reay, president of Costa Mesa-based Atlas Hospitality Group, a brokerage specializing in hotels, estimates the hotel’s annual revenue at $10 million. Garland would not confirm that estimate, but says the hotel maintains an occupancy rate between 85% and 95% for most of the year. That compares with a Valley-wide, year-to-date occupancy rate of 74.7%, according to Melissa Mills, research coordinator with hotel specialist PKF Consulting. Industry experts say a hotel usually breaks even at 50% occupancy. But lest anyone jump to the conclusion that it’s easy to make a profit running a hotel, Garland is quick to point out that it can be a quirky and perilous business.

For example, Garland pointed out that her hotel and many others in the Valley got an unexpected boost from the Northridge earthquake in 1994 when federal emergency officials and displaced local residents filled rooms for months.

But the business can also take a dive if gas prices rise too high or other factors discourage people from traveling. It’s subject to the ups and downs of the economy, she said, and it constantly requires new infusions of capital for renovations and upgrades as well as regular upkeep of rooms and the grounds.

Garland and Crank borrowed money to build the hotel, then borrowed several times for additions and renovations, she said. They flirted with the idea of owning a small chain, and even opened a second hotel in Sacramento, but later sold it.

With its location half a block from the freeway, near Universal City and close to other Southern California attractions, Garland said, the North Hollywood hotel regularly draws inquiries from potential buyers.

“I never talk to them,” she said. “It never gets that far because I’m not interested in selling.”