Darren McGavin: From Painter to Portrayer
McGavin was born William Lyle Richardson in Spokane, Washington on May 7th, 1922. The details of his early life are somewhat hazy, but he once told TV Guide that he was always running away from home. When his mother left the family, his father had no idea what to do with the youth so he placed him in a local orphanage. McGavin promptly ran away, again and again, sleeping in warehouses and on the docks, until he was sent to a boy’s home. There, with other boys his age, he was assigned chores; the guidance he received from this setting and the people running the home gave him the chance to turn his life around.
He spent one year studying dramatics at the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California before he dropped out. He took odd jobs, such as a dishwasher and wound up with the painting job that would start his foray into an acting career. He got the part, but was fired by the painting foreman, who was the only person there that recognized him. He landed in New York City, where he learned acting at the famous Neighborhood Playhouse. He also attended the Actors Studio, New School University, from which he received a B.F.A. in Theatre/ Acting.
Darren McGavin made his stage debut in the Broadway production of “The Lady Says No” in 1948, and then played Happy in “The Death of a Salesman” in 1949. In 1955, he made a good impression in a couple of motion pictures. He portrayed Frank Sinatra’s enterprising drug dealer in “The Man with the Golden Arm” and ironically played a painter, of all things, in the movie “Summertime.” When it became apparent that he would not be able to make a solid living on the big screen, he turned to television. He had already been in one TV series in the early Fifties called “Crime Photographer.” In 1958, he took on the role of rollicking, hard fisted private eye “Mike Hammer”, the first actor of many to play the character created by author Mickey Spillane.
The show was incredibly violent, with McGavin dishing out punishment to criminals in an assortment of ways.
Before “Mike Hammer” had completed its run of over seventy episodes, McGavin found himself in another series, NBC’s “Riverboat”, which ran for three seasons. He worked ninety hours a week, simultaneously playing the lead in two shows at once for a time In 1968 he once again was a detective, this time in the short lived “The Outsider.” He made a host of guest appearances on shows such as “The Man from U. N. C. L. E.”, “Dr. Kildare”, “Gunsmoke”, and “Mission Impossible.” He starred opposite Jan- Michael Vincent in the underappreciated TV movie “Tribes”, as a gunnery sergeant clashing with the hippie recruits of his Marine Corps platoon. His greatest claim to fame was to follow in the next couple of years.
“The Night Stalker” was a made for TV movie in which Darren McGavin was cast as a rumpled newspaper reporter who stumbles onto a story in Las Vegas that leads him to a confrontation with a real life vampire. Co-starring Simon Oakland, Carol Lynley, Claude Akins, and Ralph Meeker, it was the most watched TV movie of 1972. It is one of the best vampire movies ever made and it led to a sequel, 1973’s “The Night Strangler” in which McGavin’s character, reporter Karl Kolchak, tracks down an alchemist killing girls for their blood in order to keep himself eternally young. ABC took the premise one step further and provided McGavin with a weekly series, also called “The Night Stalker”, in which Kolchak runs into and does battle with all sorts of supernatural creatures such as werewolves, zombies, and aliens. Lasting one season, it has become a cult classic and eventually helped to inspire “The X-Files.”
Never at a loss for work, Darren McGavin busied himself in such projects as “Airport’77” and “The Martian Chronicles”, a mini-series in which he was teamed with Rock Hudson. In 1983, at the age of sixty one, he depicted Ralphie’s father in another classic, “A Christmas Story.” The film plays around the clock every year on the TBS network, showing McGavin as a constantly swearing father of a youth that wants a BB gun for Christmas in 1940’s Indiana. It endeared the actor to a whole new generation of fans.
Roles never dried up for McGavin, as he worked well into the Nineties. He garnered an Emmy Award in 1990 for his portrayal of Candice Bergen’s father in “Murphy Brown”. In 1997, he rendered a heart warming performance as an old soldier in a nursing home on an episode of “Touched by an Angel.” In addition to his television work, he had a constant presence on stage throughout the years, appearing in such plays as “The King and I”, “The Rainmaker”, and many others. His first marriage ended in divorce after twenty four years; his wife, Melanie York, and he had four children together. His second marriage, to actress Kathie Browne, lasted until her death in 2003.
Darren McGavin died on February 25th in Los Angeles, California, of natural causes at the age of eighty three. The red headed actor will always be remembered for the diversity of the many parts he was able to play, from a rough and tumble action figure like Mike Hammer to the “old Man’ in “A Christmas Story”, bellowing out lines like “sons of bitchin’ Bumpases!” For over fifty years the runaway who made good came into before the nation’s eyes on television, stage, and the big screen in over two hundred credited parts. For us, his painting occupation that turned into an acting job was a stroke of luck.
