Lloyd Bridges

Lloyd Vernet Bridges Jr., born January 15, 1913, in San Leandro, California, was an American actor whose career spanned film, stage, and television across more than six decades. He died on March 10, 1998. Among his four children were actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges.

Bridges grew up in San Leandro, a suburb of Oakland, where his parents, Harriet Evelyn Bridges and Lloyd Vernet Bridges Sr., had roots in Kansas and were of predominantly English ancestry. His father was involved in the California hotel business and at one point owned a movie theater. A direct descendant of William Bridges, who arrived in New England in 1623 aboard the ship Little James, Bridges graduated from Petaluma High School in 1930 before studying political science at UCLA, where he joined the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.

His Broadway career began in 1937 with a production of Shakespeare's Othello, in which he appeared in the ensemble alongside Walter Huston and Brian Aherne. He returned to the stage in Susanna and the Elders in 1940. After a gap of more than a decade, he came back to Broadway in Dead Pigeon, which ran briefly in 1953 and 1954. His final Broadway credit was Cactus Flower, which he performed in 1965, giving him a stage career on Broadway that stretched from 1937 to 1965.

Bridges began his screen career with small uncredited film appearances in 1936 before joining Columbia Pictures in 1940 as a contract performer at seventy-five dollars a week. He appeared in numerous features and short subjects during that period, including Here Comes Mr. Jordan in 1941. He left Columbia to enlist in the United States Coast Guard during World War II, and following his discharge he resumed acting. In later years he became a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary, recorded public service announcements for the organization, and was named an honorary commodore. His sons Beau and Jeff also served in the Coast Guard and Coast Guard Reserve.

After the war, Bridges secured his first lead role in the 1945 serial Secret Agent X-9 at Universal Pictures and went on to appear in more than 150 feature films over the course of his career. Notable credits included Sahara in 1943, A Walk in the Sun in 1945, Little Big Horn in 1951, and High Noon in 1952. In the early 1950s he was briefly blacklisted after acknowledging to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had been a member of the Actors' Laboratory Theatre, a group found to have had ties to the Communist Party USA. He returned to work after recanting his membership and cooperating with the committee.

Television became the medium through which Bridges achieved his widest recognition. He made his television debut in 1951 on The Bigelow Theatre and went on to appear across numerous anthology programs throughout the decade. In 1956 he received an Emmy Award nomination for his performance on The Alcoa Hour in an episode titled Tragedy in a Temporary Town, written by Reginald Rose and directed by Sidney Lumet. During that live broadcast he inadvertently used profanity while ad-libbing, generating hundreds of viewer complaints, though the episode ultimately won a Robert E. Sherwood Television Award and his performance was defended by members of the clergy. He starred in the television series Sea Hunt from 1958 to 1961, in which his character Mike Nelson was portrayed as a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Bridges earned a second Emmy Award nomination during his television career.

In the later phase of his career, Bridges demonstrated a facility for comedy through appearances in parody films, including Airplane! in 1980, Hot Shots! in 1991, and Jane Austen's Mafia! in 1998. On February 1, 1994, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.