George Kennedy

George Harris Kennedy Jr. was born on February 18, 1925, in New York City, into a family with deep roots in show business. His father, George Harris Kennedy, was a musician and orchestra leader who died when Kennedy was four years old. His mother, Helen A. Kennedy, née Kieselbach, was a ballet dancer, and his maternal grandfather was a German immigrant; his remaining ancestry was Irish and English. Kennedy made his first stage appearance at age two in a touring company production of Bringing Up Father, and by age seven he was working as a radio DJ in New York City. He appeared on Broadway in 1940 in John Henry.

Kennedy graduated from Chaminade High School in Mineola, Long Island, in 1943 and enlisted in the United States Army that same year. He served in the infantry under General George S. Patton, fought in the Battle of the Bulge, and earned two Bronze Stars. After the war he re-enlisted, eventually reaching the rank of captain before being discharged in the late 1950s following a back injury, having served a total of sixteen years.

His screen career began in 1961 with The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. Early film roles included a sadistic jail guard in the Kirk Douglas Western Lonely Are the Brave (1962), a ruthless criminal in the Cary Grant thriller Charade (1963), and an appearance in the Joan Crawford film Strait-Jacket (1964). In 1965 alone he appeared alongside Gregory Peck in Mirage, with James Stewart in The Flight of the Phoenix, and in two films with John Wayne: In Harm's Way and The Sons of Katie Elder, the latter also starring Dean Martin. His television work during this period included a role on The Phil Silvers Show, for which he also served as a military technical adviser, and a guest appearance in a 1966 episode of The Legend of Jesse James.

Kennedy won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Dragline in Cool Hand Luke (1967), playing a chain-gang convict who initially resents the new prisoner played by Paul Newman before coming to idolize him. He also received a Golden Globe nomination for the role. He followed that performance with appearances in The Dirty Dozen, Bandolero!, and The Boston Strangler. In 1970 he appeared in the disaster film Airport as airline troubleshooter Joe Patroni, earning a second Golden Globe nomination. Kennedy went on to reprise that role in Airport 1975, Airport '77, and The Concorde... Airport '79, becoming the only cast member to appear in all four films of the series.

He co-starred with Clint Eastwood in both Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and The Eiger Sanction, and appeared in the ensemble disaster film Earthquake and the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile. He starred in two television series, Sarge, which ran from 1971 to 1972, and The Blue Knight, which aired from 1975 to 1976. In 1977 and 1980 respectively, he appeared in two Japanese productions, Junya Satō's Proof of the Man and Kinji Fukasaku's Virus, both produced by Haruki Kadokawa with international casts and shooting locations. Kennedy played Captain Ed Hocken in all three films of The Naked Gun trilogy (1988, 1991, 1994), alongside Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, and O. J. Simpson. On television, he portrayed corrupt oil tycoon Carter McKay on the original Dallas series from 1988 to 1991, later reprising the role in the television films Dallas: J.R. Returns and Dallas: War of the Ewings.

Among his other notable film credits are Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, McHale's Navy, Shenandoah, The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, tick... tick... tick..., Cahill U.S. Marshal, The Eiger Sanction, The Boston Strangler, and The Delta Force. In 1998 he provided the voice of Brick Bazooka in Small Soldiers, and in 2003 he appeared on The Young and the Restless as Albert Miller, the biological father of the character Victor Newman. His final film appearance came in The Gambler (2014), in which he played Ed, the dying grandfather of Mark Wahlberg's character, in a scene lasting less than two minutes at the film's opening. Kennedy received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6352 Hollywood Boulevard in recognition of his contributions to motion pictures.

Kennedy was married four times to three women. He first married Dorothy Gillooly, a Women's Army Corps veteran, in the 1940s; they divorced in the 1950s. In 1959 he married Norma Wurman, with whom he had two children; the couple divorced in 1971, remarried in 1973, and divorced again in 1978. That same year he married Joan McCarthy, née Castagna, who died in September 2015; together they adopted three children. Kennedy was an aviator who owned a Cessna 210 and a Beechcraft Bonanza, and he maintained a lifelong affinity for Japan and its culture stemming from his wartime service with the Far East Network and his later work on the two Japanese productions. He died on February 28, 2016, at an assisted-living facility in Middleton, Idaho, ten days after his ninety-first birthday, of a heart ailment. He had resided in Eagle, Idaho, at the time of his death.