Gary Merrill

Gary Fred Merrill (August 2, 1915 – March 5, 1990) was an American actor born in Hartford, Connecticut, whose career spanned Broadway, film, and television from the late 1930s through 1980. He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and Trinity College in Hartford before beginning his acting career in 1944 while serving in the United States Army Air Forces, performing in the play Winged Victory.

Merrill's Broadway career extended from 1939 to 1980 and included appearances in productions such as Yellow Jack, Morning's at Seven, At War With the Army, Born Yesterday, and Step on a Crack. His stage work established him as a versatile performer across more than four decades of theatrical activity.

Prior to his film career, Merrill's voice earned him a recurring role as Bruce Wayne and Batman in the Superman radio series. He transitioned to film with roles in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) and All About Eve (1950), the latter of which also led to a significant personal development: on July 28, 1950, the same day his first marriage to Barbara Leeds was dissolved in Mexico, Merrill married his All About Eve costar Bette Davis. He adopted her daughter Barbara and the couple later adopted two additional children, Margot and Michael, before divorcing in 1960.

Merrill's film work included more than 50 feature films, among them Witness to Murder (1954), in which he played a detective opposite Barbara Stanwyck, and the Elvis Presley film Clambake (1967), with costar James Gregory. His television career was equally extensive, encompassing a half-dozen series and dozens of guest appearances spanning from 1953 to 1980. He played Jason Tyler on the crime drama Justice from 1954 to 1956, starred as city editor Lou Sheldon in The Reporter in 1964, and held recurring roles in Then Came Bronson and Young Doctor Kildare, both of which ran less than a season. He also appeared in multiple episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and starred in a November 1963 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour alongside Phyllis Thaxter and Fess Parker.

Beyond his entertainment career, Merrill was politically active. He campaigned in 1958 for Democrat Edmund Muskie's gubernatorial bid in Maine, participated in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches in support of Black voter registration, and sought nomination to the Maine legislature as an anti-war, pro-environmentalist candidate in opposition to President Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War policy. Shortly before his death, he published the autobiography Bette, Rita and the Rest of My Life (1989). Merrill died of lung cancer on March 5, 1990, in Falmouth, Maine, five months after the death of his former wife Bette Davis, and is buried in Pine Grove Cemetery. He was survived by his son Michael, his daughter Margot, a brother Jerry, and two grandchildren.