This page uses content from the Darren McGavin biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.

William Lyle Richardson (May 7 1922 – February 25 2006), who adopted the name Darren McGavin, was an American actor best known for playing the title role in the television horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker, and also his portrayal in the movie A Christmas Story of the grumpy father given to bursts of profanity that he never realizes his sons overhear. He also appeared as the tough-talking, funny detective in the TV series Mike Hammer.

Childhood

McGavin was born in Spokane, Washington, to Reid Delano Richardson and Grace McGavin. However, some sources list his birthplace as San Joaquin, California.

In magazine interviews during the 1960s, he stated that his parents divorced when he was very young and that his father, not knowing what else to do, put him in an orphanage at the age of 11. McGavin began to run away, often sleeping on the docks and in warehouses. He ended up in three orphanages. The last one was a boy's home, which turned out to be a safe haven for McGavin. He lived there for a few years where there were farm chores assigned, along with several other boys who were abandoned like himself. McGavin said that the owners of the home helped him to establish a sense of pride and responsibility, and that this helped to turn his life around.

Career

Still untrained as an actor, McGavin worked as a painter in the paint crew at the Columbia Pictures movie studios in 1945. When an opening became available for a bit part in A Song to Remember, the movie set on which he was working, McGavin applied for the role. He was hired for it, and that was his first foray into movie acting. (He had spent a year at College of the Pacific in Stockton, California.) Shortly afterwards, he moved to New York City and spent a decade of learning the acting craft in TV and the plays there. McGavin studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Actors Studio under the famous teacher Sanford Meisner and began working in live TV drama and on Broadway. A few of the plays in which he starred included "The Rainmaker" (where he created the title role on Broadway), "The King and I" and "Death of a Salesman".

McGavin returned to Hollywood and became a busy actor in a wide variety of TV and movie roles; in 1955 he broke through with notable roles in the films Summertime and The Man with the Golden Arm. Over the course of his career, McGavin starred in seven different TV series and guest-starred in many more; these roles on television increased in the late 1950s and early 1960s with leading parts in series such as Mike Hammer and Riverboat. He was the top contender to replace Larry Hagman as the male lead of the television series I Dream of Jeannie, but the producers chose not to replace Hagman.

McGavin was also known for his role as Sam Parkhill in the miniseries adaptation of The Martian Chronicles. He appeared as a regular in The Name of the Game in 1971 after Tony Franciosa was dismissed; he, Peter Falk, Robert Culp, and Robert Wagner stepped in to rotate in the lead role with Gene Barry and Robert Stack.

The first of his two best-known roles came in 1972, in the supernatural-themed TV movie The Night Stalker (1972). With McGavin playing a reporter who discovers the activities of a modern-day vampire on the loose in Las Vegas, the film became the highest-rated made-for-TV movie in history; and when the sequel The Night Strangler (1973) also was a strong success, a subsequent television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) was begun. In the series, McGavin played Carl Kolchak, an investigative reporter for a Chicago-based news service who regularly stumbles upon the supernatural or occult basis for a seemingly mundane crime; although his involvement routinely assisted in the dispelment of the otherwordly adversary, his evidence in the case was always destroyed or seized, usually by a public official or major social figure who sought to cover up the incident. He would write his ensuing stories in a sensational, tabloid style which advised readers that the true story was being withheld from them.

Kolchak was the inspiration for the successful 1993 series The X-Files and because of this, McGavin was asked to play the role of Arthur Dales, the man who started the X-Files, in three episodes: Season 5's "Travelers" and two episodes from Season 6, "Agua Mala" and "The Unnatural". Unfortunately, failing health forced him to withdraw from the latter, and the script (written and directed by series star David Duchovny) was rewritten to feature M. Emmet Walsh as Dales' brother, also called Arthur.

In 1983, he had his second signature role as "The Old Man," the narrator's father, in the classic Christmas movie A Christmas Story. Opposite Melinda Dillon as the narrator's mother, he portrayed an ornery, irascible working-class father, in an unnamed Indiana town in the 1940s, who was endearing in spite of his being comically oblivious to his own use of profanity and completely unable to recognize his unfortunate taste for kitsch. Blissfully unaware of his family's embarrassment by his behavior, he took pride in his self-assessed ability to fix anything in record time, and carried on a tireless campaign against his neighbor's rampaging bloodhounds. Although the film was a box office failure, grossing under $20 million, subsequent television airings led to a huge surge in its popularity; by the early 2000s, the cable station Turner Network Television had begun airing the film repeatedly in a continuous 24-hour loop just prior to Christmas [1].

McGavin made an uncredited appearance in 1984's The Natural as a shady gambler and appeared on a Christmas episode ("Midnight of the Century") of Chris Carter's Millennium, playing the long-estranged father of Frank Black (Lance Henriksen); he also appeared as Adam Sandler's hotel-magnate father in the 1995 movie Billy Madison. As mentioned in Leonard Maltin's biographical piece on Mr. McGavin, he was indeed "curiously" uncredited in "The Natural." During the filming of the movie, Robert Redford was so pleased with Mr. McGavin's portrayal of his character that they began to expand the role. However, after a certain point, union rules dictated that the actor's contract needed to be renegotiated for salary and billing. After haggling on salary, and holding up production of the movie because of it, the billing had to be decided. Apparently, Mr. McGavin became somewhat fed up with the proceedings and instructed his agent to waive his billing entirely so they could get back to filming.

He won a CableACE Award (for the 1991 TV movie Clara) and received a 1990 Emmy Award (see www.emmys.org) as an Outstanding Guest Star in a Comedy Series on the comedy series Murphy Brown, in which he played Murphy Brown (Candice Bergen)'s father.

McGavin was married twice in long-term marriages:

• Melanie York (March 20 1944 to 1969), producing four children (Bogart, York, Megan, and Bridget McGavin), ending in divorce;
• Kathie Browne (December 31 1969 – April 8 2003), ending in her death.

It is unclear whether McGavin was in military or naval service in World War II, although he was then in his early twenties and thus eligible.

Death

He died of natural causes at age 83 in a Los Angeles-area hospital, according to his son, Bogart McGavin [2]. He was survived by all four of his children. He died the day after one of his co-stars, Don Knotts, with whom McGavin had worked with twice in Disney films, in 1976's No Deposit, No Return, and 1978's Hot Lead and Cold Feet.

Filmography

1940-1970

• A Song to Remember (1945)
• Counter-Attack (1945)
• Kiss and Tell (1945)
• She Wouldn't Say Yes (1946)
• Fear (1946)
• Queen for a Day (1951)
• Summertime (1955)
• The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
• The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell (1955)
• The Delicate Delinquent (1957)
• Beau James (1957)
• The Case Against Brooklyn (1958)
• Bullet for a Badman (1964)
• The Great Sioux Massacre (1965)
• African Gold (1966)
• Mission Mars (1968)
• Anatomy of a Crime (1969)

1971-1990

• Mooch Goes to Hollywood (1971)
• Mrs. Pollifax - Spy (1971)
• Happy Mother's Day, Love George (1973) (also director and producer)
• 43: The Richard Petty Story (1974)
• B Must Die (1975)
• The Demon and the Mummy (1976)
• No Deposit, No Return (1976)
• Airport '77 (1977)
• Hot Lead and Cold Feet (1978)
• Zero to Sixty (1978)
• Hangar 18 (1980)
• Firebird 2015 AD (1981)
• A Christmas Story (1983)
• The Natural (1984)
• Turk 182! (1985)
• Flag (1986)
• Raw Deal (1986)
• From the Hip (1987)
• Dead Heat (1988)
• In the Name of Blood (1990)

1991-1999

• Captain America (1991)
• Blood and Concrete (1991)
• Happy Hell Night (1992)
• Billy Madison (1995)
• Still Waters Burn (1996)
• Small Time (1996)
• Pros and Cons (1999)

Television work

• Crime Photographer (1951 – 1952)
• Mike Hammer (1956 – 1959)
• Riverboat (1959 – 1961)
• The Legend of Jud Starr (1967)
• The Outsider (1967) (pilot episode)
• The Outsider (1968 – 1969)
• The Forty-Eight Hour Mile (1970)
• The Challenge (1970)
• The Challengers (1970)
• Berlin Affair (1970)
• Tribes (1970)
• Banyon (1971) (pilot episode)
• The Death of Me Yet (1971)
• The Night Stalker (1972)
• Something Evil (1972)
• The Rookies (1972) (pilot episode)
• Here Comes the Judge (1972)
• Say Goodbye, Maggie Cole (1972)
• The Night Strangler (1973)
• The Six Million Dollar Man (1973) (pilot episode)
• Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974 – 1975)
• Crackle of Death (1976)
• Brinks: The Great Robbery (1976)
• Ike: The War Years (1978)
• The Users (1978)
• A Bond of Iron (1979)
• Donovan's Kid (1979)
• Ike (1979) (miniseries)
• Not Until Today (1979)
• Love for Rent (1979)
• Waikiki (1980)
• The Martian Chronicles (1980) (miniseries)
• Freedom to Speak (1982) (miniseries)
• Small & Frye (1983) (canceled after six episodes)
• The Baron and the Kid (1984)
• The Return of Marcus Welby, M.D. (1984)
• My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn (1985)
• The O'Briens (1985) (sitcom pilot)
• Tales from the Hollywood Hills: Natica Jackson (1987)
• Tales from the Hollywood Hills: A Table at Ciro's (1987)
• Inherit the Wind (1988)
• The Diamond Trap (1988)
• Around the World in 80 Days (1989) (miniseries)
• Kojak: It's Always Something (1990)
• Child in the Night (1990)
• By Dawn’s Early Light (1990)
• Clara (1991)
• Perfect Harmony (1991)
• Miracles and Other Wonders (1992–199?)
• Mastergate (1992)
• The American Clock (1993)
• A Perfect Stranger (1994)
• Fudge-A-Mania (1995)
• Derby (1995)
• Touched by an Angel ([1997, guest appearance)
• X-Files ([1999, two episodes)

External links

• Official website
• BBC News - Tough-talking actor McGavin dies

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify the biographical information on this page under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation.