Lloyd Bridges
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| Lloyd Bridges | |
 Bridges in 1989 |
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| Born | Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. January 15, 1913 San Leandro, California |
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| Died | March 10, 1998 (aged 85) Los Angeles, California |
| Spouse(s) | Dorothy Simpson (1938-1998) |
Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. (January 15, 1913 – March 10, 1998) was an Emmy Award-nominated American actor. Bridges starred in popular television series, and appeared in more than 150 films.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early life
Bridges was born in San Leandro, California, the son of Harriet Evelyn (née Brown) and Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Sr., who was involved in the California hotel business and once owned a cinema. Bridges graduated from Petaluma High School in 1931. He studied political science at UCLA, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter. He also met his future wife there, Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson); they married in 1938 in New York City.[1]
[edit] Career
Bridges made his Broadway debut in 1939 in a production of Shakespeare's Othello. In 1941, he joined the stock company at Columbia Pictures, where he played small roles in features and short subjects. (In Here Comes Mr. Jordan Bridges is the clerk assisting Claude Rains in the "heaven" scene.) He left Columbia to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard. Following World War II, he returned to film acting. He was blacklisted briefly in the 1950s after he admitted to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had once been a member of the Actors' Lab, a group with links to the Communist Party. He resumed working after being cleared by the FBI, finding his greatest success in television.
Bridges gained wide recognition as Mike Nelson, the main character in the television series Sea Hunt, created by Ivan Tors, which ran in syndication from 1958-1961. Following that success, he starred in the eponymous CBS anthology The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962-1963, produced by Aaron Spelling), which included appearances by his sons Beau and Jeff. Producer Gene Roddenberry, who worked with Bridges on "Sea Hunt", reportedly offered Bridges the role of Captain Kirk on Star Trek before the part went to William Shatner. Additionally, he was a regular cast member in the Rod Serling western series The Loner (which lasted one season from 1965 to 1966), and in the two NBC failures San Francisco International Airport (1970/71) and Joe Forrester (1975-76). Later, he appeared in Paper Dolls (1984) and Capital News (1990), both for ABC, and again with Harts of the West (1993-1994), this time for CBS, a comedy/western set on a dude ranch in Nevada. Son Beau Bridges co-starred, along with Harley Jane Kozak as Beau's wife, Alison Hart, and Sean Murray as the oldest Hart son, Zane Grey Hart.
Bridges played significant roles in several popular mini-series, including Roots, How the West Was Won, The Blue and the Gray and Battlestar Galactica . For more than forty-five years, Bridges was a frequent guest star on television series. He earned two Emmy Award nominations four decades apart. The first came in 1957 for an episode of The Alcoa Hour. Then he was nominated again in 1998 for his role as Izzy Mandelbaum on Seinfeld.
Bridges appeared in more than 150 films. He started as a contract performer for Columbia Pictures, appearing in classics such as High Noon, Little Big Horn, and Sahara. By the end of his career, he was a staple of parody films such as Airplane!, Hot Shots!, and Jane Austen's Mafia!. He acted in the role of "The President" in the movie Hot Shots: Part Deux.
[edit] Personal life
A world federalist, Bridges once said, “The devastation caused by war and the pollution of our environment knows no boundaries. Only an effective world government could provide sufficient law and have the power to control these destructive forces".[2] He was also involved in several organizations, including the American Oceans Campaign and Heal the Bay, a Los Angeles-based group.
Bridges died of natural causes at the age of eighty-five. His ashes were given to his family. He was married to Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson) (1915 - 2009), from 1938 until his death. They had four children: Beau Vernet, Garrett Myles, Jeffrey Leon, and Lucinda Louise. His son, Garrett, died of sudden infant death syndrome on August 3, 1948. Jordan Bridges is a grandson of Lloyd Bridges.
An episode of Seinfeld ("The Burning") was dedicated to the memory of Lloyd Bridges. He had played the character of Izzy Mandelbaum in the episodes "The English Patient" and "The Blood". Bridges' last film, Jane Austen's Mafia!, was also dedicated to him.
[edit] Filmography
[edit] Features
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[edit] Short subjects
- The Great Glover (1942)
- They Stooge to Conga (1943)
- A Rookie's Cookie (1943)
- His Wedding Scare (1943)
- Mr. Whitney Had a Notion (1949)
- My Daddy Can Lick Your Daddy (1962)
- The World of Inner Space (1966)
- I Am Joe's Heart (1987) (voice)
[edit] Television work
- Sea Hunt (1957-1961)
- The DuPont Show with June Allyson as Captain Anderson in "Death on the Temple Bay", BSD series finale (1961)
- The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962-1963)
- The Eleventh Hour with son Beau, "Cannibal Plants, They Eat You Alive" as Leonard McCarty (1964)
- The Loner (1965-1966)
- Mission: Impossible (1966) (Fakeout:Anastas Poltroni)
- A Case of Libel (1968)
- Lost Flight (1969)
- Silent Night, Lonely Night (1969)
- The Silent Gun (1969)
- The Love War (1970)
- San Francisco International Airport (1970-1971)
- Do You Take This Stranger? (1971)
- A Tattered Web (1971)
- Deadly Dream (1971)
- Water World (1972-1975) (narrator)
- Haunts of the Very Rich (1972)
- Trouble Comes to Town (1973)
- Crime Club (1973)
- Death Race (1973)
- Benjamin Franklin (1974) (miniseries)
- The Whirlwind (1974)
- Stowaway to the Moon (1975)
- Cop on the Beat (1975)
- Joe Forrester (1975-1976)
- Force of Evil (1977)
- Roots (1977) (miniseries)
- Telethon (1977)
- Shimmering Light (1978)
- GI Diary (1978)
- Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series) (Commander Cain)
- Alice in Wonderland (1985 miniseries) (White Knight)
- Shining Time Station: 'Tis a Gift (PBS TV Special) (Mr. Nicholas)
- Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean (1990) (Harry Helmsley)
- In The Nick Of Time (1991 Christmas Movie) (Santa Claus)
- The Outer Limits – "The Sandkings" (March 26, 1995)
- Dress Gray (1986) (miniseries)
- Seinfeld (1997) (Izzy Mandelbaum)
[edit] References
- ^ McLellan, Dennis (2009-02-21). "Dorothy Bridges dies at 93; 'the hub' of an acting family". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-dorothy-bridges21-2009feb21,0,1331555.story. Retrieved on 2009-04-23.
- ^ World Peace News
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lloyd Bridges |
- Lloyd Bridges at the Internet Movie Database
- Lloyd Bridges at Allmovie
- Sea Hunt Trivia Guide, Lloyd Bridges from The Scuba Guy
- Lloyd Bridges Memorial at Find A Grave
