Denny Miller had a remarkable life. 6'4" (1m 93) and very athletic, he had a basketball scholarship at UCLA and played for the legendary coach John Wooden. Not that far from Hollywood, the big, good looking athlete found himself recruited to play Tarzan in 1959, the first blond actor to play the role. Though there are fantasy aspects to the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories, they did not find themselves into the film series, so the role does not count as genre in my admittedly idiosyncratic book. Be that as is may, the failure of Hollywood to make the public truly love any Tarzan after Johnny Weissmuller did not kill Mr. Miller's career. For many years late in his career, he was the Gorton's Fisherman. Other than landing that sweet gig, we find him in genre roles on
Werewolf, Knight Rider, V, Voyagers!, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Incredible Hulk, Beyond Westworld, Battlestar Galactica, Dr. Scorpion, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Island at the Top of the World and
I Dream of Jeannie. Ron Ely, the actor who got to play Tarzan on TV in the late sixties, would have gladly traded his career for Miller's
Best wishes to the family and friends of Denny Miller, from a fan. He is never to be forgotten.
And suddenly I'm hungry for fish sticks.
I remember him from some of those guest appearances, but mostly for his "Gilligan's Island" appearances. I just looked him up on Wikipedia and I love the title of his autobiography: "Didn't You Used To Be...What's His Name?"
ReplyDeleteAlso, side note: Gottfried John passed recently. More known for non-genre work playing villains, he did have 2 or 3 genre roles in his life, including Colonel Weiss in the short-lived TV show "Space Rangers," in a non-villain role for a change.
I did think about Gottfried John and looked him up on imdb.com, and I didn't see anything else besides Space Rangers in English, and that had only one episode play in the U.S. Just too little for me to count.
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Technically, all 6 episodes aired in the USA. I videotaped them, back in the day, so I could rewatch them. I was, and am, a huge Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa fan. Still, Mr. John's genre work was way too limited for this site. I just thought he deserved a mention in the comments here.
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