final credits - darren mcgavin
For over six decades, playing roles on television and in the movies, Darren McGavin was a familiar, reliable and often likeable face. He was one of the busiest actors in the business (at one point working on two television series simultaneously) with over 200 film and television roles to his credit.
McGavin's acting career started with a 1941 stage appearance in "Lady Windermere's Fan." He was preparing for a TV pilot as recently as late 2005. He played tough guys, wise guys and grumpy guys ... but there was always a twinkle in his eye.
But despite his extensive work, McGavin only picked up a single Emmy. Throughout his TV career, he had a reputation as a curmudgeon often bad-mouthing whatever series he was in while combatting his studio bosses -- not unlike many of the characters he brought to the screen.
McGavin gave conflicting reports about his childhood. He was born either in Spokane, Washington or in the San Joaquin Valley area of California. He sometimes stated his real birth name was William Lyle Richardson. He told TV Guide in 1973 that he was a constant runaway and as a teen lived in warehouses. His parents disappeared, he said.
In 1945, McGavin was working at Columbia Pictures as a dishwasher and a set painter when he heard of an opening for a small role in "A Song to Remember." He washed up at a nearby gas station, returned through Columbia's front gate with an agent and was promptly hired by director Charles Vidor. No one recognised him except his paint foreman, who said, "You're fired!"
After a few uncredited movie roles, McGavin travelled to New York and studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio, and began working in live TV drama and on Broadway. He appeared with Charlton Heston in "Macbeth" in a 1951 TV production of "Studio One."
McGavin then starred in the first of his six TV series, "Crime Photographer," which ran from 1951-1952 with episodes directed by Sidney Lumet. By the end of the first decade of television, McGavin had the unusual luck to find himself starring in two TV series at the same time.
First came "Mike Hammer," based on the Mickey Spillane stories, which ran from 1956 to 1959. McGavin played the hard-boiled gum-shoe with just a slight touch of camp (he later told a reporter he thought the show was a supposed to be a comedy).
He then starred as the captain of television's first Enterprise, the floating centre of the series "Riverboat." The 1959-1961 series set in the 1840s also starred Burt Reynolds. Mired in the ratings, NBC was about to cancel the show.
McGavin then rented a hotel room and interviewed real-life riverboat captains and searched old files about Mississippi river traffic. His detailed plans for improving the series fell on deaf ears and the show soon disappeared from the schedule.
McGavin spent the next half-dozen years taking on guest roles on dozens of other shows before landing his fourth TV series, NBC's "The Outsider," in 1968. It lasted one season and more guest roles followed.
His fifth series came about after he starred in two made-for-TV movies that broke rating records for television's long form.
1972's "The Night Stalker" and 1973's "The Night Strangler" featured McGavin as pork-pie hat-wearing and world-weary newspaper reporter Carl Kolchak tracking down things that go bump in the night and deep underground.
The movies begat the short-lived ABC TV series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" with Simon Oakland as McGavin's long-suffering editor and a rich host of weekly guest stars that included Jim Backus, Phil Silvers, Richard Kiel, Tom Skerritt, Scatman Crothers and Larry Storch.
Kolchak set a benchmark for cynicism and gruffness in a lead character who always seemed to have been rudely awakened from a deep sleep in his suit.
Despite the show's now cult-like status, the appeal of the newsroom drama with the attractions of fantasy and the occult didn't capture the audience McGavin was hoping for and he asked ABC to pull the plug after 20 episodes. It took another two decades for audiences to warm up to the alien and the unexplained again.
The Fox network offered up a re-fried Kolchak as "The X-Files" in 1993 (McGavin had a small recurring role as Agent Arthur Dales, the agent who started the files). It was while filming a 1999 episode of the series that McGavin suffered the stroke that effectively ended his career.
ABC revived the Kolchak series in the fall of 2005 and the original series debuted on DVD at about the same time. While the DVD release was a success, it seemed nobody was interested in seeing someone else (Stuart Townsend) play Carl Kolchak. ABC aired only six of the nine episodes filmed. McGavin had an uncredited role (digitally inserted as Reporter Standing at Desk) in the series pilot.
More guest roles followed ... and McGavin's sixth crack at the series bat came with the short-lived CBS comedy "Small & Frye" in 1983. McGavin's sole career recognition came in 1990, receiving an Emmy for an appearance as Candice Bergen's opinionated father in an episode of the 1988-1998 series "Murphy Brown."
McGavin's TV career overshadowed some notable turns on the big screen. He played Frank Sinatra's drug pusher in 1955's "The Man with the Golden Arm," an artist in David Lean's "Summertime," and he starred with Gary Cooper in "The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell," both also made in 1955.
He played Jerry Lewis' parole officer in 1957's "The Delicate Delinquent," the first role Lewis took after splitting from partner Dean Martin. He also starred alongside Don Knotts (who died a day before McGavin did) in the 1976 comedies "No Deposit, No Return" and "Hot Lead and Cold Feet."
McGavin's role in Robert Redford's 1984 "The Natural" went uncredited, and the story behind that decision belies the notion McGavin was hard to deal with. Redford was so pleased with McGavin's portrayal of his character Gus Sand that the role was expanded.
However, after a certain point, union rules dictate that an actor's contract needs to be renegotiated for salary and billing. When negotiations stalled and began to hold up production of the movie, McGavin instructed his agent to waive his billing entirely so they could get back to filming.
McGavin also made his mark in numerous made-for-TV movies, and he counts his portrayal of General George Patton in the 1979 biopic "Ike" as among his favourite performances.
Holiday audiences for over twenty years (and likely for many more years to come) will remember McGavin best for his role as the grumpy and hot-tempered father of a boy yearning for the gift of a BB gun in the 1983 comedy "A Christmas Story."
McGavin was also the voice on Budweiser's "This Bud's for You" commercials for a time. He has a Bacon number of 2.
Darren McGavin died February 25th, 2006 at the age of 83 from multiple organ failure.
Fans of McGavin may wish to visit his official web site. For more about "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," visit the McGavin site or the show's entry at Wikipedia. Other TV actor tributes can be found here.