Hugh O'Brian (born Hugh Charles Krampe; April 19, 1925 – September 5, 2016) was an American actor and humanitarian who starred in the ABC Western television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp (1955–1961) and the NBC action television series Search (1972–1973). His films included an adaptation of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians (1965); he also had a supporting role in John Wayne's last film, The Shootist (1976).
In 1965, he created and endowed the “UCLA Hugh O’Brian Acting Awards,” which, for over 25 years awarded a small cash payment but more importantly an opportunity for promising talent in the UCLA School of Fine Arts-Theatre to attract agent representation. He created the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation, (HOBY) a nonprofit youth leadership-development program for high-school scholars. It has sponsored more than 500,000 students since O'Brian founded the program in 1958, following an extended visit with physician and theologian Albert Schweitzer.
Early life and military service
O'Brian was born Hugh Charles Krampe in Rochester, New York, the son of Hugh John Krampe, who served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps, and Edith Lillian (née Marks) Krampe. O'Brian once described his father as "one of the toughest men I ever knew"; this inspired his interest in the military.
O'Brian moved with his parents to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, around 1930, when he was about five years old. His father had become an executive with the Armstrong Cork Company, which was headquartered in Lancaster. The Krampe family lived at the Stevens House Hotel temporarily before moving to the newly developed School Lane Hills houses in the city's West End. O'Brian attended Lancaster city elementary schools. The Krampes resided in Lancaster for about four years before they moved to Chicago, where his father had another position with the Armstrong Cork Company. Years later, in 1963, Hugh O'Brian was awarded the key to the city by Lancaster Mayor George Coe.
After the move to the Chicago area, Krampe and his family lived in Winnetka, Illinois, where he attended New Trier High School. He transferred to the Kemper Military School (closed in 2002) in Boonville, Missouri, where he lettered in football, basketball, wrestling, and track.
After one semester at the University of Cincinnati, Krampe dropped out to enlist in the Marine Corps during World War II. At 17, he became the youngest Marine drill instructor on record.
After World War II ended, Krampe planned to become a lawyer and had been accepted at Yale University for the fall of 1947. Before that, he lived in Hollywood, where he was dating an actress. He attended her rehearsals of the Somerset Maugham play Home and Beauty. When the lead actor failed to show up, director Ida Lupino asked him to read the lines. He got the role and the play received a tremendous review, then received a contract offer from an agent.
Krampe changed his name after the program incorrectly listed him as "Hugh Krape". He later said, "I decided right then I didn't want to go through life being known as Huge Krape, so I decided to take my mother's family name, O'Brien, but they misspelled it as 'O'Brian' and I just decided to stay with that."
Lupino signed him to Never Fear, a film she was directing. O'Brian gained a contract with Universal Pictures.
Wyatt Earp and television career
He was chosen to portray legendary lawman Wyatt Earp on the ABC Western series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, which debuted in 1955. To help develop his character, O'Brian bought Stuart N. Lake's book Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal. He also developed a relationship with Lake, who was a consultant on the show for the first two years. The series, alongside Gunsmoke and Cheyenne, which debuted the same year, spearheaded the "adult Western" television genre, with the emphasis on character development rather than moral sermonizing. It soon became one of the top-rated shows on television. During its six-year run, Wyatt Earp consistently placed in the top 10 in the United States. Decades later, he reprised the role in two episodes of the television series Guns of Paradise (1990), the television movie The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991), and the independent film Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone (1994), the latter mixing new footage and colorized archival sequences from the original series.
O'Brian appeared regularly on other programs in the 1950s and 1960s, including The Nat King Cole Show, The Jackie Gleason Show, The Ed Sullivan Show, and The Dinah Shore Chevy Show, all in 1957. He was seen in Jack Palance's ABC circus drama The Greatest Show on Earth. He starred in The Alfred Hitchcock Hour episode "Ride the Nightmare" in 1962. He also appeared as a 'guest attorney' in the 1963 Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Two-Faced Turn-a-bout" when its star, Raymond Burr, was sidelined for a spell after minor emergency surgery. He served as guest host on episodes of The Hollywood Palace in 1964 and the rock music series Shindig! in 1965. He was a guest celebrity panelist on the CBS primetime programs Password and What's My Line? and served as a mystery guest on three occasions on the latter series.
In 1971, he filmed a television pilot titled Probe, playing a high-tech (for the times) agent for a company that specialized in recovering valuable items. The pilot spawned a series for O'Brian named Search, which ran one season (1972–1973). In 1999 and 2000, he co-starred with Dick Van Patten, Deborah Winters, Richard Roundtree, and Richard Anderson in the miniseries Y2K - World in Crisis.
The actor appeared in a number of films, among them Rocketship X-M (1950), The Lawless Breed (1953), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), White Feather (1955), The Brass Legend (1956), Come Fly with Me (1963), Love Has Many Faces (1965), In Harm's Way (1965), Ten Little Indians (1965), and Ambush Bay (1966).
While onstage, Elvis Presley introduced O'Brian from the audience at a performance at the Las Vegas Hilton, as captured in the imported live CD release "April Fool's Dinner". O'Brian was a featured actor in the 1977 two-hour premiere of the television series Fantasy Island. He played the last character whom John Wayne ever killed on the screen in Wayne's final movie, The Shootist (1976). O'Brian appeared in fight scenes with a Bruce Lee lookalike in Lee's last – partially completed – film, the controversial Game of Death. O'Brian recreated his Wyatt Earp role for three 1990s projects: Guns of Paradise (1990) and The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991), with fellow actor Gene Barry doing likewise as lawman Bat Masterson for each, as well as the independent film Wyatt Earp: Return to Tombstone (1994). He also had a cameo as the father of Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the comedy Twins (1988).
O'Brian also appeared in one episode of Murder, She Wrote (1990), one episode of L.A. Law (1993) and two episodes of Call of the Wild (2000).
Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation