“Old Yeller” actress Beverly Washburn avoided pitfalls of other child actors

By Mark Randall – Jun 6, 2025 Updated Jun 10, 2025 – DeSoto Times-Tribune

Beverly Washburn is best remembered for the 1957 Disney classic “Old Yeller.” 

Beverly Washburn doesn’t know why she still gets fan mail. If you ask her, she’s not famous. 

But at nostalgia conventions, she’s had fans come up to her and literally cry because they remember her from movies like “Old Yeller” and the cult classic horror film “Spider Baby,” or the “Star Trek” episode “The Deadly Years.”

It only takes one person to say something nice about her career to make her feel appreciated and that it was all worthwhile.

“I’m not really famous,” Washburn said in a telephone interview. “But when you touch somebody like that, when they cry because they grew up watching you and can’t believe they are actually meeting me, it means so much to me.”

Beverly Washburn appearing here as “Jill” with Tony Dow in the 1959 season 3 episode 1 of “Leave it to Beaver”

Washburn will be appearing at the Mid-South Nostalgia Festival this week in Olive Branch where she will discuss her career, along with other first-time classic TV and movie star guests including Jon Provost from “Lassie,” Mary Badham who played Scout in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” Mary McDonough from “The Waltons,” Johnny Whitaker from “Family Affair,” and Sean Kelly who was Stuttering Bob in the John Wayne western “The Cowboys.” Also appearing will be Robert Fuller, Patrick Wayne, Robert Carradine, Darby Hinton, Tony Cameron, Wyatt McCrea, Diamond Farnsworth, and Jennifer Savidge.

Bing Crosby sings to a young Beverly Washburn in “Here Comes the Groom.”

Washburn, who now lives in Las Vegas, grew up in Los Angeles and was three years old when she first began acting, appearing in “The Killer That Stalked New York” in 1950, “Here Comes the Groom” with Bing Crosby in 1951, and “Superman and the Mole-Men.”

“I was so fortunate,” Washburn said. “I never realized how blessed I was, but now I do because I look back and I go oh my God! I was directed by Cecil B. DeMille, George Seaton, and Frank Capra,” Washburn said. 

Beverly in “Superman and the Mole-Men” with George Reeves as Superman

Washburn said she didn’t have a clue who any of them were at the time she was making those movies.

“I didn’t know who George Reeves was,” Washburn said. “I knew who Superman was. He wasn’t in the scene that I was in, but he was on the set. So the thrill for me was not that I was working with George Reeves, but that I was working with Superman. I didn’t know who Bing Crosby was. I didn’t know that I was being directed by Frank Capra. It wasn’t until I became older that I realized Bing Crosby is singing to me. I mean, how cool is that? But at the time, when you are six years old, it doesn’t have the same meaning. It’s only in my old age that I really enjoy it and am so grateful for the memories.”

Washburn said she is probably best known for the 1957 Disney classic “Old Yeller.” The film tells the story of a boy and his stray day who tearfully is forced to shoot it when it develops rabies.

Washburn remained close with her “Old Yeller” co-star Tommy Kirk.

“It’s a real tear jerker,” Washburn said. “And I am such an animal lover.”

Washburn said she’s had grown men tell her that they can’t watch the movie still today because it is too sad. However, she said her co-star Tommy Kirk, had a different take on the message behind “Old Yeller” and thought it was actually a good movie for children to see.

“Tommy’s take on it is that it teaches you about love and loss,” Washburn said. “It’s not about replacing an animal when it dies. It’s about giving another one a chance and loving it and being able to love again. He thought it was a good lesson.”

Washburn joked that she was at a festival and mentioned how she and Tommy had remained close friends over the years when a little girl in the front row raised her hand to ask a question.

“She said ‘that boy that you’re talking about, he shot Old Yeller.’ And I said yeah, I know. And she said ‘well, how can you still be friends with him?” Washburn said. “We remained very good friends. He used to come over to my house and have dinner. He was really a sweetheart. The sad thing is I am the only one alive from that movie now.”

Washburn said she auditioned for Walt Disney himself and was shocked that she got the part.

“Any one of the Mickey Mouse Club girls would have been wonderful,” Washburn said. “So I didn’t think I had a chance. But I read for the role and I got the part. Walt would come on the set, not every day, but he would come to the set and he was very quiet. He never told people how to do their jobs. He would just come and watch us shoot a scene and walk away. We never had much interaction, but he was very nice.”

She would go on to appear on all the big shows of the 1950s and 60s in episodes of “Dragnet,” “Gidget,” “Father Knows Best,” Wagon Train” “The Loretta Young Show,” “Leave It to Beaver,” “The Streets of San Francisco,” and many others which she recounts in her book, “Reel Tears: The Beverly Washburn Story” and “Reel Tears, Take Two.”

Washburn said many people today have never even heard of those shows or know any of the stars in them.

Washburn asks Jack Benny for his autograph and said Benny was her favorite co-star. 

“I was with someone one time and she looked at her friends and said ‘she worked with Loretta Young,’” Washburn said. “They looked like a deer in a headlight. She said ‘you know who Loretta Young is, right?’ They said, ‘no, sorry I don’t.’ Then one of them said, ‘I think I know.’ He said ‘isn’t she that country-western star?’ Then I mentioned that I worked with Jack Benny. They didn’t know who Jack Benny was. It’s so sad that people don’t remember.”

Washburn worked with Jack Benny both on radio and his 1952 television show and said he was her favorite male co-star.

“In the episode, I come out of the audience and ask for his autograph,” Washburn said. “He told me later that he was nervous because it suddenly occurred to him that we hadn’t rehearsed and it was a live audience. He said ‘I was afraid that what if you forgot your dialogue or worse, what if I forgot mine, it might throw you off.’ He said ‘I didn’t know if you’d get stage fright with an audience.’ He was such a wreck.”

Unlike his public persona of being a cheap miser, Washburn said Jack Benny was a very generous man. Benny sent her a string of pearls one year for her birthday and a St. Christopher medal. He also secretly paid her father’s medical bills when he was in the hospital.

“When my dad was dying in the hospital, Jack Benny sent over his own personal physician at his own expense to look in on my dad,” Washburn said. “He was the most generous person.”

Another favorite co-star was comedian Lou Costello, who she worked with in an episode on “Wagon Train.” 

Comedian Lou Costello praised Washburn for helping him get through filming on Wagon Train.

“He was amazing,” Washburn said. “I was old enough by then to know who he was. I knew Abbott and Costello. He was everything I could hope for and more.”

Washburn said Costello credited her with helping him to get through the filming.

“It was the only dramatic part he ever did,” Washburn said. “He was interviewed about it and he said ‘there was a little girl. Her name is Beverly Washburn, and without her I couldn’t have done it.’ It was so touching. It made me cry. He was the dearest man.”

Washburn pens a column in “The Vegas Voice” and recently wrote about three episodes that she appeared in that you would never be able to do with today’s audiences, including the one with Lou Costello.

“In today’s world, a young girl traveling with an older man who is an alcoholic accused of murder in a covered wagon would be totally inappropriate today,” Washburn said. “You couldn’t do a show like that.”

In another episode, Jack Benny makes fat jokes about a heavy-set woman. 

“They weren’t meant to be mean,” Washburn said. “There are three of us. One of the women, who always played the operator in a nasal voice, said ‘well, do we get the job or not?’ I say, ‘we’re not picky about the salary.’ And the heavyset one says ‘no, we’ll work for three square meals a day.’ Jack looks and says ‘well, I didn’t intend to go that high.’ It was funny. But in today’s world people would be appalled if you did that.”

The third episode is from “Four Star Playhouse” called “Autumn Carousel” in which she appears with Dick Powell, who plays a writer that bonds with a young girl who sits next to him on a train trip back to Los Angeles.

“I am a little girl traveling on a train alone and I sit next to him and we start talking,” Washburn said. “And the next time you know, we’re holding hands walking down the aisle of the train and I’m lighting his cigarette. In the end he says ‘there’s a carnival. Why don’t we get off and take a later train.’ It was totally innocent and nobody thought anything about it. But can you imagine that in today’s world? I mean, we get off the train and I’m holding hands with a stranger and I’m a little girl.”

Washburn also appears at many “Star Trek” conventions. Next to “Old Yeller,” she gets more fan mail letters from that one episode than anything else she’s ever done on screen.

“I get the most mail from “Old Yeller,” “Spider Baby,” and “Star Trek,” she said. “Those are the big three.”

Washburn played a science officer who contracts a sickness which makes the crew of the Enterprise age rapidly in the episode “The Deadly Years.” CBS Photo Archive

Washburn said she didn’t watch “Star Trek” at the time and knew very little about the show, but was attracted to the writing. 

“It was only in its second season and I didn’t watch it,” Washburn said. “It wasn’t as popular as it is today. I do all of these Star Trek conventions now and I see how huge it is.”

In the episode “The Deadly Years,” an away team beams down to a research station where they find several people who have died from old age and others who appear to be in their sixties, but are actually in their twenties. The team returns to the Enterprise but soon discover that they have been infected by a sickness that makes them rapidly age. Washburn plays a science officer, Lieutenant Galway, who ages rapidly from her twenties into her nineties.

“I die and I wasn’t even wearing a red shirt,” Washburn joked.

Washburn said it took them four hours to apply the aging makeup.

“I had to breathe through a straw when they put this plaster cast on my face and wait for it to dry to make the mask, and then they put the makeup on and the grey wig,” Washburn said.

She said William Shatner had to go through a similar make up process and made old man jokes the whole time during filming.

“He was great,” Washburn said. “It was a really lighthearted, fun set to be on. I didn’t really know who he was. But William Shatner was a very funny guy and he was just cracking up the whole time because they had him with this grey hair starting to age. So he was doing all this funny schtick on the set. He was quite fun actually. And people remember the scene, so I guess we did a good job of it.”

Washburn still gets a lot of fan mail from fans of the cult classic horror film “Spider Baby.”

Washburn said she is surprised at how popular “Spider Baby” is today. She’s gotten letters from fans from Hong Kong, Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Norway, Netherlands, and all over the U.S. Fans even come up to her table at conventions looking to buy “Spider Baby” tee shirts. The 1967 comedy horror film stars Lon Chaney Jr. as a man who looks after three siblings at their family estate who suffer from a unique genetic disorder that causes them to physically and mentally regress back to childhood.

“I don’t understand why it is so popular today,” Washburn said. “I have people say it is their favorite movie and I’m like, have you ever seen “Gone With the Wind?” It’s such a bizarre, out-there, quirky, strange little film.”

Washburn said it was a lot of fun making “Spider Baby” and that she adored working with Lon Chaney Jr.

“I loved him. He was wonderful and just a gentle soul,” Washburn said. “And it was a blast to make. It’s a horror film, but it’s not a slasher film. There isn’t blood or anything. It’s really done tongue in cheek. 

“Quentin Tarantino was instrumental in getting it re-released,” she continued. “He is a friend of director Jack Hill. A few years ago, Jack and I were doing a horror convention and they showed “Spider Baby” and afterward we did a podcast. We are sitting there and the moderator says ‘Jack, I’ve got to ask you. I don’t understand how Spider Baby came about. How did you write such a film?’ Jack, who was in his nineties, said ‘well, I was smoking a lot of weed back then.’ It was hilarious.  I just wish that Lon Cheney Jr. and Jill Banner were alive so they could see how popular it has become.”

Beverly with “The Lone Ranger”

Unlike many child actors who turned to drugs and alcohol or had run-ins with the law after their shows ended and their fame ebbed, Washburn said she credits her parents for instilling good values in her when she was growing up. Washburn said she didn’t come from a wealthy family and they raised her to be humble and to be grateful and to not take things for granted.

Beverly with Kirk Douglas

“I think it had to do with the way I was raised,” Washburn said. “They taught me values. If I got a part, they were always supportive. It didn’t mean I was better than  anyone else. And if I didn’t get  a part, it didn’t mean that I wasn’t good enough. It meant they were looking for something different. They taught me to live life in gratitude. 

“I never hung out with people who did drugs, so I was spared that and didn’t fall into that fame trap. I was fortunate too that I was able to do a lot of shows, whereas some child actors were pigeonholed into one series and found it hard to move on when the series ended. I was never identified with just one character. So I guess I just had a stroke of luck.”

Washburn is still acting and keeps busy meeting fans at various “Star Trek” and horror conventions

Washburn continues to act occasionally and just finished making a documentary along with Sharon Baird, one of the original Mouseketeers on “The Mickey Mouse Club,” and Mimi Gibson, who played Cary Grant’s daughter in the 1958 movie “Houseboat,” called “Here’s Looking’ At You Kid,” about being a child star. She also had a role in a pilot for a comedy series which has been picked up and will be streaming later this summer.

“It’s a cross between “Dumb & Dumber” and “Napoleon Dynamite,” Washburn said. “I play this over-the-top crazy lady who is mother to one of these three boys. I’m always yelling at my son and his friend. He’s intimidated by me because I am always yelling even though I’m like 5-feet nothing and barely come unto his chest. It’s a comedy and it’s silly. I said sh** a lot. Have never done anything like that before. It was a fun role to play.”

Below: another article on Beverly Washburn from Vanguard of Hollywood