Richard Anderson
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After seeing Gary Cooper in a movie, Richard Anderson decided that he would like to try his hand at acting. Born in Long Branch, New Jersey, he came west with his family at the age of ten and settled in Los Angeles. After graduating from University High School and serving in the army in World War II he studied at the Actors' Laboratory in Los Angeles, which later became the Actors Studio in New York. After a season of summer stock in Laguna Beach and Santa Barbara, he went into live television where he was spotted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and screen tested. Ironically he chose for his screen test a scene from Gary Cooper's The Cowboy and the Lady. From the test he was signed as a contract player. He gained valuable film experience working with Spencer Tracy, Cary Grant, William Holden, Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon. He made twenty nine films over a six year period.
With the
studio star system ending, he asked to be released from his
contract in 1957 in order to appear in Stanley Kubrick's Paths
of Glory which has since become an anti-war film classic.
Adding it up he has has made over 40 motion pictures including
The Long Hot Summer and Compulsion at the same time
getting a taste of the "golden age of television" appearing in
Playhouse 90 with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in Irwin
Shaw's The Eighty Yard Run. He moved on to co-star in
five different network television series creating his most popular
character in 1973 as "Oscar Goldman," OSI Washington boss of the
Six Million Dollar Man. Out of it came The Bionic
Woman. Anderson became the first actor ever to portray the
same character in two different television series running
concurrently on two different networks (ABC-NBC). He was nominated
for an Emmy in the 1976-1977 season. |
