Michael Brandon

After a flurry of stage activity, Brooklyn-born leading man Michael Brandon settled into a leading-man career before the cameras. Brandon's first film appearance was as Mike Vecchio in Lovers and Other Strangers (1970). Perhaps the most notable of his many TV-movie stints was as real-life biographer/confidant William Bast in the 1976 biopic James Dean. Six years later, he showed up as David Marquette, deranged kidnapper of Maud Evans in the never-resolved cliffhanger that closed out the weekly TV series Emerald Point NAS. He was seen to better advantage as Serpico-like Lt. Dempsey in the Anglo-British adventure weekly Dempsey and Makepeace (1985), co-starring with his second wife, Glynis Barber (wife number one was Bionic Woman star Lindsay Wagner). He also played overly sensitive yuppie patriarch Teddy Kramer in the 1992 sitcom Home Fires. Michael Brandon should not be confused with the 1940s utility player of the same name, who, as Archie Twitchell, played the alpaca-coat salesman in Sunset Boulevard (1950). - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide