Career Highlights: Queen of the Stardust Ballroom, Lovers and Other Strangers, FM
First Major Screen Credit: Lovers and Other Strangers (1970)
Biography
After a flurry of stage activity, Brooklyn-born leading man Michael Brandon settled into a leading-man career before the cameras. Brandon's first film appearance was as Mike Vecchio in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). Perhaps the most notable of his many TV-movie stints was as real-life biographer/confidant William Bast in the 1976 biopic James Dean. Six years later, he showed up as David Marquette, deranged kidnapper of Maud Evans in the never-resolved cliffhanger that closed out the weekly TV series Emerald Point NAS. He was seen to better advantage as Serpico-like Lt. Dempsey in the Anglo-British adventure weekly Dempsey and Makepeace (1985), co-starring with his second wife, Glynis Barber (wife number one was Bionic Woman star Lindsay Wagner). He also played overly sensitive yuppie patriarch Teddy Kramer in the 1992 sitcom Home Fires. Michael Brandon should not be confused with the 1940s utility player of the same name, who, as Archie Twitchell, played the alpaca-coat salesman in Sunset Boulevard (1950). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Since moving to the UK, Brandon has worked in TV on such shows as The Bill, Trial and Retribution, and Dead Man Weds. In 2004, he began narrating the American version of Thomas and Friends. In February 2008 he began his talk radio show on City Talk, a new local radio station in Liverpool.[2] In 2008 he appeared in the Series 4 finale of the BBC's Doctor Who, as General Sanchez, a UNIT officer.[3] Also in 2008 he appeared in the Bones (TV series), as Clive Frampton, an American millionare.
From 1976 to 1979, Brandon was married to actress Lindsay Wagner (best known as Jaime Sommers in the Bionic Woman series). He is currently married to actress Glynis Barber, with whom he co-starred in Dempsey & Makepeace, and the two have settled in the United Kingdom.[1]