Richard Davalos

Richard Davalos (November 5, 1930 – March 8, 2016) was an American actor who worked across stage, film, and television throughout a career spanning more than five decades. Born in the Bronx, New York City, of Spanish and Finnish descent, Davalos showed an early inclination toward performance, taking part in a school production of Cinderella at age six, in which he played both the talking mirror and the prince.

Davalos first came to wide attention in 1955, the same year he made his Broadway appearance, when he was cast as Aron, James Dean's brother, in the film East of Eden. That year he also appeared in I Died a Thousand Times. His Broadway work in 1955 encompassed productions of two Arthur Miller one-act plays, A View from the Bridge and A Memory of Two Mondays, performances that earned him the Theatre World Award in 1956.

His film career continued steadily over the following decades. He portrayed the convict Blind Dick in Cool Hand Luke (1967) and went on to appear in All the Young Men (1960), The Cabinet of Caligari (1962), Pit Stop (1969), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Brother, Cry for Me (1970), Hot Stuff (1979), Death Hunt (1981), Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), and Ninja Cheerleaders (2008).

Television also occupied a significant portion of Davalos's career. In 1960, he appeared in an episode of Bonanza as a young man intent on killing his father, a sheriff who had previously sent him to prison. From 1961, he played Jeff in the NBC Civil War drama The Americans, portraying the younger of two brothers who enlisted on opposing sides of the conflict — Jeff with the Confederacy, while his older brother Ben, played by Darryl Hickman, joined the Union. Davalos made two appearances on Perry Mason, first in 1962 as James Anderson in "The Case of the Hateful Hero," and again in 1964 in "The Case of the Ice-Cold Hands." In 1966, he guest-starred in an episode of the espionage series Blue Light.

Beyond his performing credits, Davalos's image appears on the covers of three albums by the British rock band The Smiths: Strangeways, Here We Come, Best...I, and ...Best II. He was the father of actress Elyssa Davalos and musician Dominique Davalos, and the grandfather of actress Alexa Davalos, known for The Chronicles of Riddick. Davalos died on March 8, 2016, at St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, at the age of 85.