- Richard Jaeckal, Come Back, Little Sheba, 1952. A crowded diary got in the way of Brady being Terry Moore’s fella.
- Carroll O’Connor, All In The Family, TV, 1971-79. When Mickey Rooney passed, the ground-breaking producer Norman Lear (surprisingly) asked Brady to be Archie Bunker. An odd choice to those of us knowing him more as a B-movie hunk – an Alan Ladd without need of lifts – than for his later character studies on TV and in Warren Beatty’s $. (His brother, Lawrence Tierney, would have been better, if too frightening). Brady and O’Connor were both 47 – O’Connor being 42 days older – and they shared similar girths. Tom Bosley (Ron Howard’s father on Happy Days) and Jackie Gleason also passed. When Lear called up O’Connor, the actor-producer-director and Actors Studio life member was living in Italy. He’d read all about the abrasive BBC show, Till Death Do Us Part, and told his wife it couldn’t work in the US. He insisted, therefore, on a return plane ticket go Rome! played Bunker 304 times (counting spin-offs) – an extremely lite version of Warren Mitchell’s iconic BBC character, Alf Garnett. O’Connor still won four Emmy awards from eight nominations. Brady guested in four 1976 episodes as Joe Foley.
Birth year: 1924Death year: 1985Other name: Casting Calls: 2