Lonny Chapman

Lonny Chapman, born Lon Leonard Chapman on October 1, 1920, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was an American actor whose career spanned stage, film, and television across more than five decades. He died on October 12, 2007, in North Hollywood, California, at the age of 87, from complications related to heart disease.

Chapman grew up in Joplin, Missouri, where he attended Joplin High School and later Joplin Junior College, graduating in 1940. The day following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served five years in the South Pacific during World War II. After his discharge, he earned a BFA from the University of Oklahoma in Norman in 1947. That same year, he and his close friend and fellow student Dennis Weaver hitchhiked together to New York City, where Chapman secured the role of Turk in Come Back, Little Sheba.

His professional stage career began in Chicago, where he played Wiley in a company production of Mr. Roberts. Chapman made his Broadway debut in 1949 as a guard in The Closing Door, launching a period of stage work that continued through 1963. His Broadway credits include The Time of Your Life, in which he portrayed Tom both on Broadway and at the Brussels World's Fair, as well as Whistler's Grandmother, General Seeger, Marathon '33, and The Traveling Lady. Between 1956 and 1961, he taught acting in New York, and during the summers of 1959 through 1967 he directed and produced more than 80 plays in Fishkill, New York, acting in more than 30 of them himself.

Chapman also worked as a playwright, authoring several original works including The Buffalo Skinner (1958), Cry of the Raindrop (1960), Hoot Sudie (1970), Go Hang the Moon (1974), Night at the Red Dog (1979), and Happy Days Are Here Again Blues (1979). In 1973, he became artistic director of the non-profit Group Repertory Theatre in North Hollywood, California, an organization that presented more than 350 productions during his tenure. In 1999, the theater was renamed the Lonny Chapman Group Repertory Theatre in his honor.

His film career began with the 1955 movie Young at Heart, in which he played Ernie the plumber. That same year he appeared in East of Eden, followed by Baby Doll (1956), The Birds (1963), The Cowboys (1972), Where the Red Fern Grows (1974), Norma Rae (1979), 52 Pick-Up (1986), and Reindeer Games (2000).

On television, Chapman made his first appearance in 1951 on Starlight Theatre, playing an arrogant high-school football player in an episode titled "Miss Bruell." In 1958 he portrayed detective Jeff Prior in the NBC series The Investigator, and in 1964 he appeared on Perry Mason as Jack Talley, a murderer, in "The Case of the Tandem Target." He played detective Frank Malloy in the CBS series For the People and appeared twice on The Defenders. Between 1972 and 1975, he guest-starred in three episodes of NBC's McCloud, which starred his longtime friend Dennis Weaver. His many other television appearances included Gunsmoke, The Rifleman, Bonanza, Mission: Impossible, Quincy M.E., The A-Team, Matlock, NYPD Blue, and Murder, She Wrote, among others. In the miniseries Blind Ambition (1979), he portrayed L. Patrick Gray.

Chapman married Erma Dean Gibbons of Joplin, Missouri, in 1944, and the couple remained together for 63 years. They had two children, a daughter named Linda Dean and a son named Wyley. In the fall of 2005, Missouri Southern State University named Chapman its Outstanding Alumnus, an honor his friend Dennis Weaver had previously received.