Leif Erickson

Leif Erickson, born William Wycliffe Anderson on October 27, 1911, in Alameda, California, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television across several decades. Before pursuing acting, he worked as a vocalist and trombone player with a band, and he built early performance experience through a comedy vaudeville act and work in Max Reinhardt's productions.

Erickson's Broadway career extended from 1938 to 1960 and included productions such as Higher and Higher, Retreat to Pleasure, The Cream in the Well, Tea and Sympathy, and The World of Carl Sandburg. His role in Tea and Sympathy, in which he played the macho husband of a character portrayed by Deborah Kerr, carried over into the film adaptation of the same production.

His screen work began in 1933 with two band films featuring Betty Grable, followed by a series of Westerns based on Zane Grey novels starring Buster Crabbe. He appeared in a wide range of subsequent films, including Conquest (1937), in which he played Greta Garbo's brother, as well as The Snake Pit, Sorry Wrong Number, On the Waterfront, Invaders from Mars, Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd, The Carpetbaggers, Roustabout, and A Gathering of Eagles. In the 1951 remake of Show Boat, he portrayed Pete, a vindictive boat engineer. His final feature film appearance came in Twilight's Last Gleaming in 1977.

On television, Erickson appeared across numerous series, including Rawhide, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Daniel Boone, The Rifleman, Night Gallery, Marcus Welby M.D., Medical Center, Cannon, Longstreet, The Rockford Files, The Rookies, and the 1977 series Hunter. He played Dr. Hillyer in a 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and returned to that series the following year as Paul White. His most prominent television role was Big John Cannon in NBC's The High Chaparral, which ran from 1967 to 1971. The character was a rancher pursuing the establishment of a cattle empire in the Arizona Territory while navigating conflict with the Apache. His final television appearance was in a 1984 episode of Fantasy Island.

During World War II, Erickson enlisted in the U.S. Navy and rose to the rank of Chief Petty Officer in the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit. He served as a military photographer in combat zones and as an instructor, and was shot down twice in the Pacific, earning two Purple Hearts. He was among the personnel who filmed and photographed the Japanese surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Erickson died of cancer in Pensacola, Florida, on January 29, 1986, at the age of 74.