Over a career that spanned more than 40 years, Beverly McDermott was a key player in growing Florida’s movie and television industries. Honored as the state’s “first lady of film casting” by Gov. Claude Kirk in 1962, the attractive, personable blonde helped choose stars for television shows such as The Jackie Gleason Show and Miami Vice and movies like Cocoon, Lenny, and Black Sunday.

McDermott died Wednesday at a Hollywood hospice. She was 85.

“She was a vibrant woman. Nothing was impossible for her to do,” said Jack McDermott, her husband of 54 years. “She’s had a pretty exciting life.”

A native of Somerville, Mass., McDermott was running a nightclub in Boston where she met her husband, a radio disc jockey, at a talent show. Shortly after they started dating, she told him she had to go to New York to ride horseback in Madison Square Garden’s World Championship Rodeo. Charmed, he stuck around and they married in 1958, then moved to Hollywood, Fla., in 1960.

McDermott decided she wanted to go into business as a casting director, and was instrumental in persuading several California studios produce films in Florida, according to her husband.

“She’d be cooking dinner and have the phone to her ear casting a movie,” Jack McDermott said.

For the filming of the 1977 disaster movie, Black Sunday featuring a blimp crashing into the Orange Bowl — it was McDermott’s job to fill the stadium with 40,000 people. She had to go before the Miami City Commission to get approval – and then figure out where she was going to get all those extras for the crowd scene.

According to Jack McDermott, his wife solved the problem by phoning the United Fund and promising officials she could get a Hollywood star to appear in a documentary about the charity if they would fill the Orange Bowl with people.

“My wife can get anything done – nothing stopped her,” McDermott said.

She also had a flair for the eccentric.

While working on the animal serials Gentle Ben and Flipper in the 1960s, McDermott brought home a Bengal tiger, complete with teeth and claws, as a favor to an animal trainer on the shows. The McDermotts and their kids, Cheryl and Richard, played with the tiger in their swimming pool and took it shopping and to the post office. Fortunately, it never harmed anyone.

“The tiger lived with us for a year,” Jack McDermott said. “It was very tame. But you can still see the claw marks on the palm tree in front of our house.”

In the 1980s, Beverly McDermott was instrumental in casting a little-known actor named Don Johnson in a lead role in the television series Miami Vice. She also engineered the comeback of singer/actress Connie Francis with concerts at Hollywood’s old Diplomat Hotel. Francis, who lives in Parkland, became a close friend.

In 2005, McDermott served as associate producer of the movie, Hitters Anonymous, shot in South Florida. She also helped expose fraudulent talent scouts who promised families television and movie roles for their children, according to her husband.

Besides her husband, McDermott is survived by her children, Cheryl Bloise of Hollywood and Richard McDermott of Charlotte, N.C.; three grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held Jan. 28 at 2 p.m. at Landmark Funeral Home, 4200 Hollywood Boulevard, Hollywood.