1. Diane Brewster was an American television actress most noted for playing three distinctively different roles in television series of the 1950s and 1960s: confidence trickster Samantha Crawford in the Western Maverick with James Garner; pretty young second-grade teacher Miss Canfield in Leave It to Beaver; and doomed wife Helen Kimble in The Fugitive.
Diane Brewster's father was Phillip Sloan Diane Brewster, a trial lawyer in Missouri; her mother was Geraldine ; she had an older brother, Paul.
Diane Brewster was born in Kansas City, Missouri and went to Shawnee Mission High School.
Diane Brewster was a Pep Club member, Class Secretary, Cheerleader and Homecoming Queen Attendant.
Later, Diane Brewster studied liberal arts at the University of Kansas.
Diane Brewster moved to Los Angeles from the Kansas City area around 1955.
In 1956, Diane Brewster was the announcer on The Ina Ray Hutton Show, a variety program on NBC television.
On Maverick, Diane Brewster's character is a gorgeous gambling con artist who often affects a southern accent to convince marks of her reliability, but is ultimately likable.
Diane Brewster first played the character in a 1956 episode of Cheyenne entitled "Dark Rider" before appearing opposite James Garner in the third episode of Maverick, "According to Hoyle".
Diane Brewster appeared in the show's pilot, "It's a Small World", as Miss Simms, a secretary with a dairy company, and in four regular season episodes as Miss Canfield.
Diane Brewster was replaced by Sue Randall as "Miss Landers" on the second season of Leave It to Beaver.
On January 31,1959, Diane Brewster played Lisa Caldwell in the episode "Runaway Train" of NBC's Cimarron City Western television series starring George Montgomery.
That same year, Diane Brewster appeared in The Young Philadelphians playing the mother of Paul Newman's character.
Diane Brewster made almost 50 appearances in various other television and film roles, including episodes of Crusader starring Brian Keith, Wanted: Dead or Alive with Steve McQueen, Tombstone Territory, Tales of Wells Fargo with Dale Robertson, and Harbor Command with Wendell Corey.
In 1960, Diane Brewster had a starring role as Wilhelmina "Steamboat Willy" Vanderveer in The Islanders, an hour-long adventure series set in the South Pacific, with William Reynolds and James Philbrook.
That same year, she portrayed the titular role in "The Lita Foladaire Story," an episode of Wagon Train with Ward Bond and silent film star Evelyn Brent, in which Diane Brewster's character had been killed before the start of the show, with her sections of the story posthumously depicted in flashbacks.
Diane Brewster was a guest star in 1965 on Wagon Train, appearing in "The Echo Pass Story" along with Jack Lord and James Caan, which aired on January 3,1964.
Diane Brewster appeared several times in flashbacks as the murdered wife Helen Kimble in The Fugitive, most prominently in Episode 14, The Fugitive, "The Girl from Little Egypt", broadcast December 24,1963.
Diane Brewster appeared in two episodes of Death Valley Days, in a 1966 episode of Family Affair, and in an installment of Ironside before retiring.
Diane Brewster reappeared in four episodes of The New Leave It to Beaver.
In California, Brewster married Jabe Z Walker, an oral surgeon from Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.