According to actress
Beverly Garland, she and Crawford were acting together in 1953 in a play, Dark of the Moon, at the Hollywood Players Ring Theater, the place where she had met her then-husband,
Richard Garland a few years earlier. Her best friend,
Lorraine Crawford, was married to Crawford at the time. The Garlands would go to the Crawford's house, and Beverly and John Crawford would then go together to the theater and return after to rejoin their spouses at the Crawford home. One night they came home from the play and Beverly caught her husband in a near embrace with her best friend in the Crawford kitchen. He denied but shortly afterwards admitted to an affair. Both John Crawford and Beverly divorced their spouses immediately, with Beverly retaining her ex-husband's name because her career was rising at the time and she did not wish to endanger it with a name change.
