Baby boomers know Lloyd Bridges as Mike Nelson, the square-jawed frogman star of the undersea adventure series Sea Hunt. The show ran from 1958-1961 and then continued for years in reruns. In 1980 Bridges' career was resurrected when he played a goofy plane dispatcher in the 1980 satire Airplane! and its 1982 sequel Airplane II. He is the father of the actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges.
Bridges was briefly blacklisted for political activism during the McCarthy era... In the 1990s he appeared in two more aerial parodies, Hot Shots! (1991) and Hot Shots! Part Deux (1993).
Career Highlights: High Noon, Home of the Brave, Cousins
First Major Screen Credit: The Royal Mounted Patrol (1941)
Biography
Working from the ground up in stock companies, Lloyd Bridges was a member of the progressive Actors Lab company in the mid 1930s. He made his Broadway debut toward the end of that decade in a production of Othello. Signed by Columbia in 1941, Bridges appeared in everything the studio assigned him, from Three Stooges 2-reel comedies to such "A" pictures as Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), Talk of the Town (1942), and Sahara (1943). He began freelancing in 1945, accepting the prescient role of a deep-sea diver in 1948's 16 Fathoms Deep, among other films. The most memorable of his '50s assignments was the leading role in the cult science-fiction programmer Rocketship X-M (1950) and the part of the look-out-for-number-one deputy in High Noon (1952).
Thanks to his earlier involvement in the Actors Lab and his admission at the HUAC hearings that he'd once flirted with communism, Bridges was "graylisted" during the mid-'50s, able to find work only in lesser pictures and TV shows. He was rescued by producer Ivan Tors, who cast Bridges as diver-for-hire Mike Nelson in the TV series Sea Hunt. Filmed between 1957 and 1961, Sea Hunt was the most popular syndicated program of the era, turning Bridges into a millionaire. Alas, neither of his subsequent series of the '60s, The Lloyd Bridges Show (1962) and The Loner (1965), survived their first seasons. Undaunted, Bridges continued working into the '90s, displaying a hitherto untapped flair for zany comedy in such films as Airplane! (1980), Joe vs. the Volcano (1990), and the two Hot Shots films. Bridges was the father of actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges. A committed environmentalist, he was involved in several organizations including the American Oceans Campaign and Heal the Bay, a Los Angeles-based group. Bridges died of natural causes on March 10, 1998. Shortly before his passing, he had completed work on two films, Jane Austen's Mafia and Meeting Daddy; in the latter film, Bridges co-starred with his eldest son Beau. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Jr. (January 15, 1913 – March 10, 1998) was an American actor. Bridges starred in television series, and appeared in more than 150 films.
Bridges was born in San Leandro, California, the son of Harriet Evelyn (née Brown) and Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Sr., who was involved in the California hotel business and once owned a movie theater. Bridges graduated from Petaluma High School in 1931. He studied political science at UCLA, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter. He met his future wife there, Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson); they married in 1938 in New York City.[1]
Career
Bridges made his Broadway debut in 1939 in a production of Shakespeare's Othello. In 1941, he joined the stock company at Columbia Pictures, where he played small roles in features and short subjects. (In Here Comes Mr. Jordan Bridges is the clerk assisting Claude Rains in the "heaven" scene.) He left Columbia to enlist in the U.S. Coast Guard. Following World War II, he returned to film acting. He was blacklisted briefly in the 1950s after he admitted to the House Un-American Activities Committee that he had once been a member of the Actors' Lab, a group with links to the Communist Party. He resumed working after being cleared by the FBI, finding his greatest success in television.
A world federalist, Bridges once said, “The devastation caused by war and the pollution of our environment knows no boundaries. Only an effective world government could provide sufficient law and have the power to control these destructive forces".[2] He was also involved in several organizations, including the American Oceans Campaign and Heal the Bay, a Los Angeles-based group.
Bridges died of natural causes at the age of eighty-five. His ashes were given to his family. He was married to Dorothy Bridges (née Simpson) (1915 - 2009), from 1938 until his death. They had four children: Lloyd Vernet "Beau", Garrett Myles, Jeffrey Leon, and Lucinda Louise. His son, Garrett, died of sudden infant death syndrome on August 3, 1948. Jordan Bridges is a grandson of Lloyd Bridges.
An episode of Seinfeld ("The Burning") was dedicated to the memory of Lloyd Bridges. He had played the character of Izzy Mandelbaum in the episodes "The English Patient" and "The Blood". Bridges's last film, Jane Austen's Mafia!, was dedicated to him.
