Beverly Garland, who played Fred MacMurray's TV wife on the family sitcom My Three Sons, has died at the age of 82 after a long illness, her son-in-law Packy Smith told the Los Angeles Times.

A versatile actress, Garland's 50-year career included 40 movies and dozens of television shows. She played an undercover police officer in the 1957-59 series, Decoy, the first American television police series with a woman protagonist.

She was a favourite of B-film fans for her roles in low-budget 1950s movies such as Swamp Women and The Alligator People, in which she chased an alligator man into the swamp.

She was best-known for her comedic roles. She played Bing Crosby's wife in The Bing Crosby Show in the mid-1960s, and went on to be cast as the second wife of MacMurray's widower in the last three seasons of My Three Sons in the early 1970s.

Garland's big-screen credits include The Joker is Wild, Where the Red Fern Grows and Airport 1975.

She had recurring roles in Remington Steele, Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King, and she was nominated for an Emmy in 1955 for her role as a leukemia patient in the pilot of the medical drama Medic.

Born Beverly Fessenden in 1926 Santa Cruz, she became Beverly Garland when she married actor Richard Garland. They divorced in 1953, and in 1960 she married real estate developer Fillmore Crank, with whom she had two children. Crank died in 1999.

She was the honorary mayor of North Hollywood where she operated her namesake hotel, Beverly Garland's Holiday Inn.