Background
Born in Canton, Ohio, Garner was pushed by her mother into the limelight and entered in talent quests while still a child.
Born in Canton, Ohio, Garner was pushed by her mother into the limelight and entered in talent quests while still a child.
As a child actress, Garner had her first film role in 1938. Featured roles in such films as Black Widow (1954) did not help to establish her in mature film roles, and although she progressed to theatrical work, she made relatively few acting appearances as an adult. By 1938 she had made her first film appearance, and over the next few years appeared in several more films, including Jane Eyre (1943) and The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).
She reached the height of her success at the age of 13 in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), winning an Academy Juvenile Award largely for this performance.
In the same year she showed she could handle comedy by giving a fine performance in Junior Mission (1945). Like many child performers, Garner was unable to make a successful transition into adult film roles.
She guest-starred steadily in television roles from the early 1950s through the 1960s. She was a regular panelist on the National Broadcasting Company television series, Who Said That?, along with H. V. Kaltenborn and Boris Karloff.
In the summer of 1960, she was cast as Julie in the episode "Stopover" of David McLean"s National Broadcasting Company western series, Tate.
In 1960 and again in 1962, she was cast in the episodes "Once Around the Circuit" and "Build My Gallows Low", respectively, of the American Broadcasting Company series, Adventures in Paradise, with Gardner McKay. After her film career ended, she ventured into stage acting and had some success but also worked as a real estate agent and fleet car executive between acting jobs in order to support herself. (Garner had worked with Altman before.
He directed a 1961 episode of Bonanza, "The Rival", in which she appeared as a girl being courted by Hoss Cartwright) Her final screen performance was a small part in a 1980 made-for-television feature This Year"s Blonde.
Garner died from pancreatic cancer in 1984 at the age of 52.