Lloyd Bridges
Lloyd Bridges | |
---|---|
![]() Bridges at the 61st Academy Awards in 1989. | |
Born | Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. January 15, 1913 San Leandro, California, U.S. |
Died | March 10, 1998 Los Angeles, California, U.S. | (aged 85)
Occupation | Actor |
Years active | 1936—1998 |
Spouse | Dorothy Simpson (1938–1998; his death) |
Children | Jeff Bridges, Beau Bridges, Lucinda Bridges, Garrett Bridges (deceased) |
Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. (January 15, 1913 – March 10, 1998), was an American actor who starred in a number of television series and appeared in more than 150 feature films. Bridges is best known for his role of Mike Nelson in Sea Hunt, the most-popular syndicated American TV series in 1958.[1] He is the father of actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges.
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 movie theater.[2] Bridges graduated from Petaluma High School in 1931. He studied political science at UCLA, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity. He met his future wife there, Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson); they married in 1938 in New York City.[3]
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 pilot of the plane 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 garnered press in 1956 for his emotional performance on live anthology program The Alcoa Hour, in an episode titled "Tragedy in a Temporary Town", directed by Sidney Lumet.[4] During the performance, Bridges inadvertently slipped some profanity in while ad-libbing.[5] Although the slip of the lip generated hundreds of complaints, the episode won a Robert E. Sherwood Television Award, with Bridges' slip being defended even by some members of the clergy.[5][6][7] Bridges received an Emmy Award nomination for the role.[8]
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. In addition, he was a regular cast member in the Rod Serling western series The Loner (which lasted one season from 1965 to 1966; Bridges pulled out in disagreement over the violent content of the show), and in the two NBC failures San Francisco International Airport (1970/71) and a Police Story spin-off 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 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 received a second Emmy Award nomination four decades after the first when he was nominated in 1998 for his role as Izzy Mandelbaum on Seinfeld.
He started as a contract performer for Columbia Pictures, appearing in classics such as A Walk In The Sun, High Noon, Little Big Horn, and Sahara. By the end of his career, he had re-invented himself and demonstrated a gifted comedic talent in such parody films as Airplane!, Hot Shots!, and Jane Austen's Mafia!. He acted in the role of "The President" in the movie Hot Shots! Part Deux.
Personal life
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Beau_and_lloyd_Bridges_1992.jpg/220px-Beau_and_lloyd_Bridges_1992.jpg)
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".[9] 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: the actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges; a daughter, Lucinda Louise Bridges; and another son, Garrett Myles Bridges (born between Beau and Jeff), who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome on August 3, 1948. The actor Jordan Bridges is Beau's son and Lloyd's grandson.
An episode ("The Burning") in the final Seinfeld season (1998) was dedicated to the memory of Lloyd Bridges. He had played the character of Izzy Mandelbaum in the episodes "The English Patient" in 1997 and "The Blood" in 1998.
Bridges's last film, Jane Austen's Mafia!, was dedicated to him.
Filmography
Features
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)
- Bulleted list item
Television work
- Jukebox Jury (1953)
- Sea Hunt (1957–1961)
- The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford (January 8, 1959)
- 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)
- East of Eden(1981 miniseries) (Samuel Hamilton)
- The Blue and the Gray (1982 miniseries) (Ben Geyser)
- Grace Kelly (1983)
- Paper Dolls (1984) (Grant Harper)
- Alice in Wonderland (1985 miniseries) (White Knight)
- Shining Time Station: 'Tis a Gift (PBS TV Special) (Mr. Nicholas)
- Capital News (1990) ( Jo Jo Turner)
- 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)
- The Other Woman (1995) (Jacob)
- Dress Gray (1986) (miniseries)
- Seinfeld (1997) (Izzy Mandelbaum)
Further reading
- Mask and Flippers (1960) (non-fiction) by Lloyd Bridges and Bill Barada, (Hardcover edition, 196 pages, Published by Chilton Company – Book Division)
References
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000978/bio
- ^ H.W. Wilson Company (1990). Current biography yearbook, Volume 51. H. W. Wilson Co. p. 90.
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(help) - ^ McLellan, Dennis (February 21, 2009). "Dorothy Bridges dies at 93; 'the hub' of an acting family". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 23, 2009.
- ^ "Actor's Slip Of Tongue Keeps TV Viewers Arguing". The Hartford Courant. 9 March, 1956. p. 9. Retrieved 7 May 2011.
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(help) - ^ a b "Profanity Ad-libbed by Emotional Actor". The Leader-Post. Associated Press. February 20, 1956. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
- ^ Newcomb, Horace (2004). Encyclopedia of Television. CRC Press. p. 50. ISBN 9781579584115.
- ^ Hyatt, Wesley (March 10, 2004). A Critical History of Television's The Red Skelton Show, 1951-1971. McFarland. p. 48. ISBN 9780786417322.
- ^ "Bridges Stars at Ogunquit". Lewiston Evening Journal. July 18, 1964. p. 4A. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
- ^ World Peace News
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Lloyd Bridges at IMDb
- Lloyd Bridges at the Internet Broadway Database
- March-April 2004 – UNITED WORLD, "publication of the Coalition for a Democratic World Government, News and Views."
- Lloyd Bridges at AllMovie
- Sea Hunt Trivia Guide, Lloyd Bridges from The Scuba Guy
- 1935 Yearbook Photo
- Lloyd Bridges at Find a Grave