Andrew Prine

Andrew Lewis Prine (February 14, 1936 – October 31, 2022) was an American actor born in Jennings, Florida, who built a career spanning more than six decades and encompassing over 180 film and television productions. Raised in a farming community, he graduated from Miami Jackson Senior High School before attending the University of Miami on a theater scholarship. He left the university without completing his degree and relocated to New York City to pursue acting, enrolling at the Actors Studio, of which he remained a life member.

In the mid-1950s, Prine worked as a struggling stage actor in New York. His professional debut came in 1957 with an appearance on United States Steel Hour. At age 22, he was cast in the Broadway production of Look Homeward, Angel, an adaptation of Thomas Wolfe's novel written by playwright Ketti Frings. The play opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on November 28, 1957, and ran for 564 performances before closing on April 4, 1959. Prine joined the production as a replacement for Anthony Perkins. The show won the 1958 Best American Play award and received multiple Tony Award nominations. His Broadway work also included A Distant Bell, which played at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre in 1960, where he portrayed John Creighton. His stage credits beyond Broadway encompassed Long Day's Journey into Night alongside Charlton Heston and Deborah Kerr at the Ahmanson Theatre in 1977, and The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, directed by Henry Fonda.

Prine departed Broadway after recognizing the significant pay disparity between stage and screen work. Beginning in 1959, he took on a series of small television roles before landing a prominent film part in 1962 as James, Helen Keller's older brother, in the Academy Award-nominated production The Miracle Worker. That same year, he secured the lead role of Andy Guthrie opposite Earl Holliman in the NBC series Wide Country, a 28-episode drama about two rodeo-performing brothers that aired from 1962 to 1963. Rodeo performer and technical advisor Slim Pickens contributed to his preparation for the role, and Prine later credited Holliman's dedication and script contributions for the quality of the series.

Following the cancellation of Wide Country, Prine remained active throughout the 1960s in Western television series including Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Virginian, and Wagon Train. His television appearances also extended to non-Western productions such as Dr. Kildare, Cannon, Combat!, Twelve O'Clock High, and a first-season episode of The Fugitive in which he played Dr. Richard Kimble's brother Ray. In the late 1960s, he appeared in three films directed by Andrew V. McLaglen: The Devil's Brigade (1968) with William Holden, Bandolero! (1968) with Jimmy Stewart, Dean Martin, and Raquel Welch, and Chisum (1970) with John Wayne. Of all the genres he worked in, Prine identified Westerns as his personal favorites, and in 2001 he received the Golden Boot Award in recognition of his body of work in that genre, along with two Dramalogue Critics Awards for Best Actor in a leading role.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Prine appeared in a range of television series including Baretta, Barnaby Jones, Hawaii Five-O, The Bionic Woman, Dallas, and the science-fiction miniseries V and its sequel V: The Final Battle. He also accumulated credits in a succession of cult horror films during this period, among them Simon, King of the Witches (1971), Hannah, Queen of the Vampires (1973), Terror Circus (1973), The Centerfold Girls (1974), The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976), Grizzly (1976), The Evil (1978), and Amityville II: The Possession (1982).

In the 1990s and 2000s, Prine continued working in both film and television, with appearances on Weird Science, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Saving Grace with Holly Hunter, Boston Legal, Six Feet Under, and an Emmy-winning episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation on which he collaborated with director Quentin Tarantino. He also hosted Conversations with Andrew Prine on the Encore Western Channel, conducting interviews with figures including Eli Wallach, Harry Carey Jr., Patrick Wayne, and filmmaker Mark Rydell.

In his personal life, Prine married actress Sharon Farrell in 1963; the marriage ended in divorce the same year. He subsequently married actress Brenda Scott in 1965, a relationship that involved multiple marriages and divorces, the last of which concluded in 1978. In 1986, he married actress and producer Heather Lowe, and the two remained together for 36 years until his death. Prine died of natural causes on October 31, 2022, while on vacation in Paris, France, at the age of 86.