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- Dark-haired, Ivy League-looking Bradford Dillman, whose white-collar career spanned nearly five decades, possessed charm and confident good looks that were slightly tainted by a bent smile, darting glance and edgy countenance that often provoked suspicion. Sure enough, the camera picked up on it and he played shady, highly suspect characters throughout most of his career.
The actor was born in San Francisco on April 14, 1930, to Dean and Josephine Dillman. Yale-educated, he graduated with a B.A. in English Literature. Following this he served with the US Marines in Korea (1951-1953) before focusing on acting as a profession. Studying at the Actors Studio, he spent several seasons apprenticing with the Sharon (CT) Playhouse before making his professional acting debut in "The Scarecrow" in 1953.
Dillman took his initial Broadway bow in Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey Into Night" in 1956, originating the author's alter ego character Edmund Tyrone and winning a Theatre World Award in the process. This success put him squarely on the map and 20th Century-Fox took immediate advantage by placing the darkly handsome up-and-comer under contract. Cast in the melodrama A Certain Smile (1958), he earned a Golden Globe for "Most Promising Newcomer" playing a Parisian student who loses his girl (Christine Carère) to the worldly Italian roué Rossano Brazzi. He followed this with a strong ensemble appearance in In Love and War (1958), which featured a cast of young rising stars including Hope Lange and Robert Wagner. More acting honors followed after completing the film Compulsion (1959), which told the true story of the infamous 1920s kidnapping/murder case of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. He went on to share a "Best Actor" award at the Cannes Film Festival with fellow co-stars Dean Stockwell, who played the other youthful murderer, and veteran Orson Welles.
Though he was a magnetic player poised for stardom, Dillman's subsequent films failed to serve him well and were generally unworthy of his talent. Though properly serious and stoic as the title character in Francis of Assisi (1961), the film itself was stilted and weakly scripted. Circle of Deception (1960) was a misguided tale of espionage and intrigue, but it did introduce him to his second wife, supermodel-cum-actress Suzy Parker. While A Rage to Live (1965) with Suzanne Pleshette was trashy soap material, The Plainsman (1966) was rather a silly, juvenile version of the Gary Cooper western classic. As a result of these missteps--and others--he began to top-line lesser quality projects or play supporting roles in "A" pictures. His nothing role as Robert Redford's college pal-turned Hollywood producer in The Way We Were (1973) and his major roles in the ludicrous The Swarm (1978) and Lords of the Deep (1989) became proof in the pudding. His last good film role was in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1973), although he did play an interesting John Wilkes Booth in the speculative re-enactment drama The Lincoln Conspiracy (1977) and had a fun leading role in the Jaws (1975)-like spoof Piranha (1978).
Dillman bore up very well on TV over the years, subsisting on a plethora of mini-movies and guest spots on popular series, playing everything from turncoats to frauds and from adulterers to psychotics. He earned a Daytime Emmy for his appearance in Last Bride of Salem (1974) and starred in two series--Court Martial (1965), as a military lawyer, and King's Crossing (1982), as an alcoholic parent and teacher attempting to straighten out. He also spent a season on the established nighttime soap Falcon Crest (1981) in 1982.
A narrator, director and teacher of acting in later years. Bradford launched a late-in-the career sideline as an author. The football fan inside him compelled him to write "Inside the New York Giants" (1995), a book that rated players drafted by the team since 1967. Two years later he published his memoirs, the curiously-titled "Are You Somebody?: An Actor's Life." He retired from the screen after a few guest star shots on "Murder, She Wrote" in the mid-90s.
From 1956 to 1962, Dillman was married to Frieda Harding, and had two children, Jeffrey and Pamela. Following their divorce, he met well-known model-turned-actress Suzy Parker during the production of Circle of Deception (1960) and the couple married on April 20, 1963. They had three children, Dinah, Charles, and Christopher. Daughter Pamela Dillman has worked as an actress. Dillman was made a widower when Parker died on May 3, 2003. He lived for many years in Montecito, California, and helped raise money for medical research. He died in Santa Barbara, California on January 16, 2018, aged 87, from complications of pneumonia. - Actor
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Georg Stanford Brown was born on 24 June 1943 in Havana, Cuba. He is an actor and director, known for Stir Crazy (1980), Roots (1977) and Bullitt (1968). He was previously married to Tyne Daly.- Sam Melville was born on 20 August 1936 in Fillmore, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Big Wednesday (1978) and Scarecrow and Mrs. King (1983). He was married to Anne Melville and Patricia Ann Horsley. He died on 9 March 1989 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
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Robert Urich grew up in Toronto, Ohio, one of four siblings of Slovak and Rusyn descent, raised Catholic by their parents, John P. Urich (died 1977) and Cecelia (née Halpate) Urich (died 2002). His athletic ability led to a four-year football scholarship at Florida State University (FSU). He earned his Bachelor's degree in Radio and Television Communications from Florida State University in 1968 and his Master's degree in Broadcast Research and Management from Michigan State University in 1971. He joined WGN radio in Chicago as a sales account representative. He then briefly appeared as a TV weatherman, and soon realized he wanted to become an actor.
Urich's big break came in 1972 when he played Burt Reynolds's younger brother in a stage production of "The Rainmaker". Reynolds and Urich were both alumni of FSU. Reynolds brought him to California and let him stay in his home until he got his acting break. He also recommended Urich to producer Aaron Spelling for the TV series S.W.A.T. (1975). Although that series lasted only one season, Spelling remembered Urich and later cast him in Vega$ (1978), which had a longer run.
He was starring in the TV series The Lazarus Man (1996) when he was diagnosed with cancer, which caused the cancellation of the series. The cancer went into remission after treatment and he resumed acting again with his role as Captain Jim Kennedy III on Love Boat: The Next Wave (1998). The cancer would claim Urich's life on April 16, 2002 at the age of 55, survived by his wife, children, siblings, mother (who died later that same year, on October 5, 2002, aged 90) and large extended family.