Gil Gerard, the actor from Arkansas best known for his turn as the wisecracking hero of the 1979-81 NBC series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, died Tuesday. He was 82.
Gerard lived in Georgia and died after a battle with “a rare and viciously aggressive form of cancer,” his wife, Janet, announced in a Facebook post.
In 1977 films, Gerard had played Lee Grant‘s romantic interest in Airport ’77 and had starred as a moonshiner in the Appalachia-set comedy Hooch when he was approached to star in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, co-produced by Glen A. Larson at Universal Television.
Based on the popular comic strip character most famously featured in a 1939 movie serial that starred champion Olympic swimmer Buster Crabbe, the light-hearted sci-fi series kicked off with a 1979 movie developed in the wake of the huge success of Star Wars.
At first, the dashing Gerard wasn’t interested in the part. “I saw what it did to Adam West‘s career with Batman, and this was another cartoon character. I didn’t want to do this campy stuff,” he said in a 2018 interview.
However, he finally was persuaded to sign on, and the Buck Rogers movie proved to be a hit, finishing among the top 25 domestic grossers that year. The film was then retooled to serve as the show’s two-hour opening episode.
Buck Rogers lasted two seasons and a total of 32 episodes through April 1981 before being canceled.
Gerard then toplined a series of telefilms including 1982’s highly rated Help Wanted: Male, also starring Suzanne Pleshette, and played a bachelor cop who teaches martial arts skills to a youngster (Ernie Reyes Jr.) on the 1986-87 ABC series Sidekicks.
The youngest of three boys, Gilbert Cyril Gerard was born on Jan. 23, 1943, in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father, Frank, was a knife salesman, and his mother, Gladys, a teacher.
After graduating from Little Rock Catholic High and spending a couple of years at Arkansas State Teacher College (now the University of Central Arkansas), he moved to New York in 1969 and studied acting with Philip Burton at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.
He drove a cab at night to make ends meet, and one of his fares arranged for him to audition for a role in Arthur Hiller‘s Love Story, then filming in New York. He was hired as an extra, had a bit part that was left on the cutting-room floor and worked for about 10 weeks on the movie.
Gerard spent the next several years appearing in commercials — more than 400 by his count — and played POW turned doctor Alan Stewart on the NBC soap The Doctors from 1973-76. He also appeared with Cliff Robertson in Frank Perry’s Man on a Swing (1974).
He came up with the story and produced Hooch for his own production company, Prudhomme Productions. The film, he admitted, was a rip-off of Smokey and the Bandit.
After portraying a carpenter who falls in love with Caroline Ingalls (Karen Grassle) on a 1977 episode of NBC’s Little House on the Prairie, Michael Landon hired him to star in Stone, a series about an innocent man seeking to rebuild his life following a decade in prison. A pilot was made, but the show wasn’t picked up.
As Capt. William Anthony “Buck” Rogers, a NASA/U.S. Air Force pilot who is accidentally frozen in his spacecraft in 1987 and then discovered in the year 2491 after a nuclear war, Gerard starred opposite Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering and Felix Silla as the robot Twiki (voiced by Mel Blanc).
“I thought the character had a sense of reality about him,” he said in 2017. “The sense of humor I liked very much and his humanity, I liked. I thought it was kind of cool. He wasn’t a stiff kind of a guy. He was a guy who could solve problems on his feet, and he wasn’t a superhero.”
In 1983, Gerard produced the Broadway musical Amen Corner, which was based on the James Baldwin play and starred Rhetta Hughes.
Gerard also appeared on the 1990 CBS series E.A.R.T.H. Force; hosted the 1992 reality show Code 3; played Major Dodd in 1997 on the NBC daytime soap Days of Our Lives; and showed up in the Ryan Gosling-Russell Crowe comedy The Nice Guys (2016).
He also was the subject of the 2007 Discovery Health Channel documentary Action Hero Makeover, on which he decides to have gastric bypass surgery after his weight had ballooned to 350 pounds. In a 1990 article in People, he estimated that he had lost $1 million worth of work because of overeating.
Gerard, who had a long friendship with former President Bill Clinton, was married four times, including once to actress Connie Sellecca (Hotel) from 1979 until their 1987 divorce. In addition to Janet, his wife of 18 years, survivors include his son with Sellecca, Gib.
In a post on his Facebook account, Gerard wrote: “My life has been an amazing journey. The opportunities I’ve had, the people I’ve met and the love I have given and received have made my 82 years on the planet deeply satisfying. … Don’t waste your time on anything that doesn’t thrill you or bring you love. See you out somewhere in the cosmos.”
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