Her family, including mother Thelma and older sister Dorothe, moved back to the states when she was a child and she grew up in La Mesa, California, a few miles east of San Diego.

Beverly graduated from Grossmont High School in June 1950 and began acting at San Diego's Globe Theater, where she won a scholarship to the Geller Theatre Workshop in Los Angeles.

At 17 she joined the Hollywood Studio Club, where actress hopefuls such as Marilyn Monroe and Kim Novak were among her fellow residents.

In early 1955 director Nicholas Ray cast Beverly as a member of the high school gang in "Rebel Without A Cause."

This groundbreaking, troubled-teens movie staring James Dean has attained status as a Hollywood classic and was voted for inclusion in the Library of Congress by the National Film Registry in 1990.