Stephen Young

The son of a Toronto financier, 18-year-old Stephen Young was signed to a baseball contract with the Cleveland Indians, but his professional athletic career ended before it began when he injured his knee playing ice hockey. Young spent the next few years as a salesman for a variety of items, then took up radio and TV commercial production. While vacationing in Europe with a friend, he landed a bit part in the superproduction Cleopatra (1963), then went on to minor roles in such Spanish-filmed spectaculars as 55 Days at Peking and The Leopard. Upon returning to Toronto, Young decided to become a full-time actor. Billed under his given name of Stephen Levy, he appeared as Jack Williams on the Ontario-based daytime drama Moment of Truth (1965), and co-starred with Austin Fox on the prime time Canadian adventure series Seaway (1965-1966). He then headed to Hollywood, where he starred in a TV pilot called I Married a Bear; it didn't sell, but did lead to Young's two-season hitch as lawyer Ben Caldwell in the weekly Judd for the Defense (1967-1969). Stephen Young went on to character roles in such films as Patton (1970) and Soylent Green (1973), not to mention scores of made-for-TV movies.