Martin Brooks

Martin Brooks, born Martin Baum on November 30, 1925, in the Bronx, New York City, was an American actor whose career spanned Broadway, television, and film across several decades. He died on December 7, 2015, at his home in Studio City, Los Angeles, at the age of 90.

Brooks spent part of his childhood in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where his family relocated when he was ten years old. Following high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving as a paratrooper with the 11th Airborne Division during World War II and receiving a Purple Heart for wounds sustained in combat. He subsequently attended Penn State University and studied at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School for Social Research in New York City. An off-Broadway performance in Outside the Door earned him a best actor award, and on the advice of producer Richard Rodgers, he adopted the stage name Martin Brooks.

His Broadway career ran from 1949 to 1963 and included productions such as Burning Bright, An Enemy of the People, I Am a Camera, The Advocate, and Night of the Auk. In John Steinbeck's Burning Bright, Brooks played the role of Victor alongside Kent Smith, Barbara Bel Geddes, and Howard Da Silva, in a stage adaptation Steinbeck had drawn from his 1950 novel. His work in that production brought him both the Theatre World Award and the Donaldson Award in 1951. His Broadway credits also placed him alongside performers including Julie Harris and Barbara Bel Geddes. In 1959, he appeared in Saul Levitt's The Andersonville Trial with Brian Donlevy and Charles Durning, beginning a friendship with Durning that lasted until Durning's death in 2012.

On television, Brooks built an extensive body of work beginning in the 1950s with appearances on The Philco–Goodyear Television Playhouse. In the 1960s he appeared in Combat! and in a 1967 episode of Gunsmoke. He held a recurring role as Deputy D.A. Chapman in McMillan & Wife during the 1972–73 season and guest-starred in episodes of Mission: Impossible, Night Gallery, The Mod Squad, Love American Style, and The Silent Force, among others. He made ten appearances as Edgar Randolph in the prime-time soap opera Dallas, contributing to a story arc centered on J.R. Ewing, and later appeared in Knots Landing as Ted Burton. He also played Arthur Bradshaw in General Hospital and Mike Snow in Hunter.

Brooks became widely recognized for his portrayal of scientist Rudy Wells in The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, a role he took over from Alan Oppenheimer beginning in 1975, after the character had also briefly been played by Martin Balsam. By the fall of 1977, Brooks and co-star Richard Anderson had become the first actors known to portray the same characters as series regulars on two different networks simultaneously, as NBC had picked up The Bionic Woman following its cancellation by ABC while ABC continued to broadcast The Six Million Dollar Man. That arrangement lasted one season before both series were cancelled in the spring of 1978. Brooks returned to the role of Wells in three television films: The Return of the Six-Million-Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman in 1987, Bionic Showdown: The Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman in 1989, and Bionic Ever After? in 1994.

In addition to his acting work, Brooks authored two novels, Danny Brown and Roman Candle. His play Flo and Joe was optioned for a Broadway production and received workshop productions at the Actors Studio and at Theatre West.