Billy Halop

Billy Halop Online (http://home.comcast.net/~shelga/index.html). Hunter's two previous marriages included actress Barbara Rush in the early 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide. He died the following day from his injuries. For the rest of his life, Billy Halop supplemented his nursing income with small TV and movie roles, gaining a measure of latter-day prominence as Archie Bunker's cab-driving pal Bert Munson on the '70s TV series All in the Family. In May 1969, shortly after marrying actress Emily McLaughlin, he suffered a cerebrovascular accident while at home, causing a fall and a skull fracture. John's Hospital in Malibu. With the demise of the studio contract system in the early 1960s and the out-sourcing of much feature production, Hunter like many other leading men of the 1950s had to find work in B-pictures produced in Europe, Hong Kong, and Mexico, with the occasional television guest part in Hollywood.

In 1960, he married a multiple sclerosis victim, and the nursing skills he learned while taking care of his wife led him to steady work as a registered nurse at St. But Hunter was soon filming the pilot for yet another NBC series, the espionage thriller Journey Into Fear, which the network failed to pick up and a motion picture called Brainstorm (1965). Diminishing film work, marital difficulties and a drinking problem eventually ate away at Halop's show business career. Although Temple Houston did not survive its first season, NBC offered him the lead role of Captain Christopher Pike in the pilot episode (The Cage) of a new science fiction series, Star Trek. His pensive take on the role was in contrast to the more idiosyncratic style of William Shatner, who took the part after Hunter, deciding to concentrate on motion pictures, declined to film a second Star Trek pilot requested by NBC in 1965. A long-standing rivalry between Halop and fellow Dead-Ender Leo Gorcey (both actors wanted to be the leader of the gang) led to Billy's breakaway from the Dead End Kids and its offspring groups, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys, though Halop briefly starred in Universal's "Little Tough Guys" films. After serving in World War II, Halop found that he'd grown too old to be effective in the roles that had brought him fame; at one point he was reduced to starring in a cheap "East Side Kids" imitation at PRC studios, Gas House Kids (1946). that included starring as a circuit-riding Texas lawyer in the NBC series Temple Houston (1963-64), which Hunter's production company co-produced. After several years as a well-paid radio juvenile, Billy was cast as Tommy Gordon in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End (1935), where thanks to his previous credentials he was accorded star status. Traveling to Hollywood with the rest of the Dead End Kids when Samuel Goldwyn produced a film version of the play in 1937, Billy had no trouble lining up important roles, specializing in tough kids, bullies and reform school inmates in such major pictures as Dust be My Destiny (1939) and Tom Brown's School Days (1940). Having guest starred on television dramas since the mid-1950s, Hunter was now offered a two-year contract by Warner Bros.

The original leader of the original "Dead End Kids," American actor Billy Halop came from a theatrical family; his mother was a dancer and his sister Florence Halop was a busy radio actress. Among an all-star cast in the World War II battle epic The Longest Day (1962), he provided the climactic heroic act of breaching the defense wall atop Normandy's Omaha Beach. February 11, 1920 - November 9, 1976. Ford also recommended Hunter to director Nicholas Ray for the role of Jesus in the biblical King of Kings (1961), a difficult part met by critical reaction that ranged from praise to ridicule. A loan-out to co-star with John Wayne in the title roles of the now-classic western The Searchers (1956) began the first of three pictures he made with director John Ford, followed by The Last Hurrah (1958) and Sergeant Rutledge (1960). Hunter's handsome looks and gentle manner recalled two earlier Fox stars, Tyrone Power and the young Henry Fonda.

He made his Hollywood debut in Fourteen Hours (1951), had star billing by Red Skies of Montana (1952), and first billing in Sailor of the King (1953). In 1950, while a graduate student in radio at the University of California, Los Angeles and appearing in a college play, he was spotted by talent scouts and offered a two-year motion picture contract by 20th Century Fox that was eventually extended to 1959. He served stateside in the United States Navy in World War II, then studied drama at Northwestern University. He was born Henry Herman McKinnies, Jr. in New Orleans, Louisiana, and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he began acting in local theater and radio in his early teens.

Jeffrey Hunter (November 25, 1926 - May 27, 1969) was a film and television actor.