1. – Ted Bessell, Hail Tn The Chief, TV, 1985. Gray and Dick Shawn were among those auditioining to support the first female US president – Patty Duke (almost, inevitably) – as she dealt with a Soviert nuclear war (Shawn became the USSR leader Zolotov), cabinet spies, personal attacks, an impotent husband and son in a sex scandal. The series died after seven chapters. Bissel won earlier fame as Marlo Thomas’ boyfriend Danny, in That Girl!, TV, 1965-71.
2. – John Heard, The Milagro Beanfield War, 1988. Directing his second film, Robert Redford reduced novelist John Nichols’ 200 characters to about 40 and saw Gray for lawyer Charlie Bloom. Gray was picked up by stretch limo at a Rhode Island theatre, Lear jetted to meet Redford in Santa Fe and flown back to Providence in time for his next night’s show. He lost the film but gained enough anecdotes to add “The $15,000 Audition” to his monologue show blowing the whistle on the making of The Killing Fields. His act was filmed as Swimming To Cambodia, 1987. He was found drowned in New York’s East River. Suicide. Like his mother in 1967.
Birth year: 1941Death year: 2004Other name: Casting Calls: 0