Linda Carlson(1945-2021)

The smart and talented actress and playwright Linda Carlson was born in Minnesota of Swedish ancestry. She had a varied career on stage and screen, but became perhaps best known to viewers as TV station boss Bev Dutton in Newhart (1982). Carlson attended the University of Iowa where she was awarded a degree in speech and dramatic arts. After briefly working as a high school teacher in Michigan, she moved to New York for further studies, graduating with an M.A. from the Tisch School of the Arts. Carlson's first job in show biz was as a theatre usherette. She broke into professional acting as the first white performer to appear with the Negro Ensemble Company in New York. Subsequent stage work came her way via repertory theatre companies in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana and New Jersey. In 1973, Carlson made her Broadway debut opposite Leonard Nimoy in Otto Preminger's production of Full Circle. Four years later, she moved to Hollywood to star in the short-lived drama series Westside Medical (1977) as one of a trio of young doctors at a Southern Californian clinic. There was to be a further recurring part for her in Ron Leibman's Kaz (1978), but her on-screen time gradually diminished as the show ran its course.

Carlson also guest-starred on Kojak (1973), Lou Grant (1977), Quincy, M.E. (1976), Cagney & Lacey (1981) and Space: Above and Beyond (1995), as well as portraying a judge in 22 episodes of the Emmy Award-winning legal drama Murder One (1995). Her few prominent roles on the big screen included that of Jed Clampett's sister Pearl Bodine in The Beverly Hillbillies (1993).

After quitting the acting profession in 2002, Carlson moved to Connecticut to devote herself to philanthropic enterprises, notably the Hartford-based non-profit Village for Families & Children. She had previously founded the Abbott-Carlson Scholarship for high school graduates on the West Coast.