Andrew Duggan

Duggan was born in Franklin, Johnson County, Indiana. During World War II, he served in the United States Army 40th Special Services Company, led by actor Melvyn Douglas[1] in the China Burma India Theater of World War II. His contact with Douglas later led to his performing with Lucille Ball in the play Dreamgirl. Duggan developed a friendship with Broadway director Daniel Mann[2] on a troop ship when returning from the war. Duggan appeared on Broadway[3] in The Rose Tattoo, Gently Does It, Anniversary Waltz, Fragile Fox, and The Third Best Sport.

Duggan appeared in some 70 films and in more than 140 television programs between 1949 and 1987. In film he appeared in Westerns, war pictures, political thrillers, dramas, horror films, and other genres, generally assaying authority figures. Among his roles were playing a pastor and padre, sheriff and warden, doctor and professor, numerous judges and generals, and three times the President of the United States.

Duggan did voice-over work including Ziebart's 1985 Clio Award-winning "Friend of the Family (Rust in Peace)" television commercial.[4]

In 1957, Duggan appeared as Major Ellwood in the TV Western Cheyenne in the episode titled "Land Beyond the Law". He appeared on Gunsmoke in the episode titled “Cheap Labor” in 1957. He played a villain in the first episode of NBC's Wagon Train. That same year, he was cast with Peter Brown and Bob Steele in the guest cast of the first episode of the ABC/Warner Bros. series, Colt .45, starring Wayde Preston as Christopher Colt, an undercover agent and pistol salesman in the Old West. In the opening episode, "The Peacemaker" or "Judgment Day", Duggan plays Jim Rexford; Brown is cast as Dave, and Steele as Sergeant Granger. He made three Westerns for Columbia Pictures in 1957 and 1958.

Peggy McCay, Ronnie Dapo, Carol Nicholson, Tramp the dog and Andrew Duggan, Tim Rooney and Ahna Capri in Room for One More (1962)

In 1959, Duggan was contracted to Warner Brothers Television where he was cast in ABC's Bourbon Street Beat,[5] in which he portrayed Cal Calhoun, the head of a New Orleans detective agency. Bourbon Street Beat was canceled after a single season.

During this time, Duggan guest-starred in several Warner Bros. television series and appeared in several Warner Bros. films, including The Chapman Report and Merrill's Marauders, and the television pilot FBI Code 98. He also provide narration for several Warner Bros. film trailers.

Duggan guest-starred in numerous television series in the 1960s, including the Western Tombstone Territory in the episode "The Epitaph". He appeared as an incorrigible criminal trying to gain amnesty in the 1962 episode "Sunday" of the ABC/WB series, Lawman, starring John Russell. In 1963, he guest-starred on the short-lived ABC/WB Western series, The Dakotas.

Duggan was cast on Jack Palance's ABC circus drama, The Greatest Show on Earth and the NBC medical drama about psychiatry, The Eleventh Hour in the role of Carl Quincy in the 1963 episode entitled "Four Feet in the Morning". He played the over-protective Police Chief Dixon in the 1963 spring break film Palm Springs Weekend, in which he attempts to prevent his daughter from seeing student Jim Munroe (Troy Donahue). In 1965, he appeared on David Janssen's ABC series, The Fugitive. Duggan had recurring roles on CBS's 90-minute Western, Cimarron Strip, and on ABC's The Great Adventure. He had a recurring role as General Ed Britt in the second and third seasons of the ABC war series, Twelve O'Clock High.

He performed in a pivotal supporting role in the 1964 film, Seven Days in May starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Ava Gardner and Fredric March, and played the U.S. President and an imposter in the 1967 film, In Like Flint with James Coburn. Duggan was cast in a 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour entitled "The McGregor Affair".

In 1966, he played Father Michael in "The Eighth Day", an episode of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre. That same year, he appeared on F Troop as Major Chester Winster, in the episode "The New I. G.". He also played Brigadier/Major General Ed Britt (seasons two and three) in the ABC TV series 12 O'clock High.

Duggan and Elizabeth Baur in Lancer (1968)

Duggan played a leading role as cattle baron Murdoch Lancer in the 1968–1970 series Lancer.[6]

Duggan played John Walton in the television film, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971).[7] In the TV series it inspired, The Waltons, the role of John Walton was played by Ralph Waite. Even earlier, Henry Fonda had played essentially the same role in the movie based on Earl Hamner's writing that inspired them both, Spencer's Mountain (1963), although the character's name was different.

In 1973, Duggan had a cameo appearance in the blaxploitation film Black Caesar. In 1974, he portrayed General Maxwell D. Taylor in the TV docudrama The Missiles Of October. He appeared as FBI Inspector Ryder in the 1975 NBC-TV movie Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan, and had roles in the 1976 TV miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man and Once an Eagle. In 1978, he appeared in the episode "And the Sea Shall Give Up Her Dead" of the NBC crime drama The Eddie Capra Mysteries. In 1980, he appeared as Sam Wiggins in the ABC television movie The Long Days of Summer.

One of Duggan's last roles was as Dwight D. Eisenhower in a TV biography called J. Edgar Hoover (1987), a role he had played earlier in the NBC miniseries, Backstairs at the White House (1979). He also played President Lyndon B. Johnson in a different biography of Hoover, The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover (1977). He played Judge Axel in A Return to Salem's Lot (1987).

Duggan in 1954 married Broadway dancer and actress Elizabeth Logue,[8] whom he called Betty.[9] The couple had three children, Richard, Nancy, and Melissa.

The veteran actor, at age 64, died of throat cancer on May 15, 1988.[10]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Andrew Duggan.

• Andrew Duggan at IMDb
• Andrew Duggan at the Internet Broadway Database