Western star hangs her hat in Las Vegas

Riding skills and beauty brought actress fame

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Former model, movie actress and opera singer Virginia Herrick should be accustomed to being in the spotlight by now. But the soft-spoken, petite former ingenue -- now in her 80s -- still blushes when asked to talk about herself.

"I was much too shy to be in pictures," the octogenarian, dressed in a fringed Western vest she made herself, said quietly while leafing through black-and-white photographs taken during the 1950s. "I said, 'I can't do that.' "

But Herrick, who grew up on a ranch in Washington state and worked as a candy cutter before being discovered, did in fact end up starring as "one of the girls" in several '50s-era B-movie Westerns. Modest by nature, Herrick until recently had seen only one of her movies and didn't know they had acquired something of a cult following.

"I made them so long ago and for such a short time that I had almost forgotten them," she said. "I walked away from the movie business and never looked back. Then I found that (the movies) were still popular and were being collected by many people."

In 1950, Herrick was working as a model in New York City when her mother became ill in California.

Herrick moved to Hollywood to help care for her ailing mother and was almost immediately approached by a movie agent.

On one of her first shoots, Herrick said, she was so nervous her eyes swelled shut.

Despite this setback, Herrick starred in a half dozen Westerns and several other movies over the next few years, including "I Killed Geronimo," "Roar of the Iron Horse," "Montana Desperado" and "Why Men Leave Home." She also appeared in many early cowboy TV shows.

Fortunately, Herrick said, roles as "the girl" didn't require that she do much acting.

"I thought, 'I can do that if I don't have to talk,' " she said.

"They were using her as the cutie-puss," said Dick Madigan, a longtime friend and fan of Herrick's.

Another reason Hollywood liked Herrick for Westerns was her ranching background.

"She was able to shoot and ride," Madigan said.

But then the young Herrick met Omar Garrison, a former war correspondent and a syndicated columnist for the L.A. Times-Mirror Company.

Her mother approved of Garrison and Herrick agreed to marry him after he promised to take her to Italy with him, where she could study opera and he could write. Herrick, a pianist with a coloratura soprano voice, had long dreamed of singing in an opera.

"(Garrison) didn't believe I could sing," Herrick said. "I'm 5 feet tall and weigh 100 pounds. He didn't believe my voice was so big."

Herrick went on to study and perform in operas all over Europe, but her bashfulness didn't go away.

"I could perform, but I was too shy to talk to people," she said.

When Herrick and Garrison eventually moved back to the United States, they settled in Cedar City, Utah.

Herrick, who had been taught to sew as a child by her mother, began making custom wedding dresses and clothing to sell. To this day, she still makes her own clothing.

"I wanted to be a costume designer," she explained.

"She's had about four careers," Madigan said. "If she had an ego, she would be dangerous."

Madigan said sewing, singing, acting and playing piano aren't the end of Herrick's talents, either. She's also a great cook.

"She's pretty good on plumbing and electrical, too," he joked.

Herrick and Garrison were married for 45 years when he died in 1997 and she moved to northwest Las Vegas alone.

Soon after, she met Madigan at a church function.

"I saw her and thought, 'Hmm. I would like to get to know her,' " Madigan said with a smile.

That's when he learned about Herrick's brush with movie fame.

"She started talking about these movies, so I started getting them together," Madigan said.

He also spent a great deal of time doing research, arranging the photos Herrick's mother had saved into albums and tracking down other memorabilia, such as movie posters. Herrick's old movies had become something of a collector's item, and she began being asked to appear at Western film festivals.

She also was able to rediscover her past and learn something about herself.

"I thought I was a terrible actress," she said. "You don't do much acting in the B-movie Westerns. But I watch the movies now and I think, you know, I wasn't so bad."