Diane Brewster
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Diane Brewster (born 11 March 1931 in Kansas City, Missouri; died 12 November 1991) was an American television actress most noted for playing three distinctively different roles in US TV series of the 1950s and 60s: confidence trickster Samantha Crawford in Maverick; pretty young second-grade teacher Miss Canfield in Leave It To Beaver; and doomed wife Helen Kimble in The Fugitive.
On Maverick, a sophisticated western featuring James Garner and Jack Kelly, Brewster's character was a gorgeous gambling con artist who often faked a southern accent. Though she was usually on the wrong side of the law, she was also ultimately likable; perhaps this was because Samantha Crawford was named after Maverick writer/producer Roy Huggins' mother.
Brewster had actually first played Crawford in one 1956 episode of Cheyenne, another western television series (the episode was "Dark Rider"), before showing up opposite James Garner in the third episode of Maverick, "According to Hoyle." Brewster's other Maverick appearances include the episodes "The Savage Hills" with Jack Kelly, "The Seventh Hand" with Garner, and the famous "Shady Deal At Sunny Acres" with Kelly. Including the Cheyenne episode, Brewster played Samantha Crawford only five times (with her last appearance coming in 1958)but she made an indelible impression on critics and viewers. Jodie Foster's character in the Mel Gibson movie version was based on Brewster's Samantha Crawford,
Diane Brewster also portrayed the schoolteacher "Miss Canfield" on Leave It to Beaver for the the series' first season in 1957/58(a role she also played in the later TV revivals). Brewster went on to make almost 50 appearances in various TV series in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as playing a number of movie roles, and in 1960, she had a starring role in the series The Islanders. As a favor to Roy Huggins, Brewster appeared several times with no screen credit as murdered wife Helen Kimble (in flashbacks) in Huggins' TV series The Fugitive, which ran from 1963-67.
Brewster died of heart failure in 1991.
