Bill Daily
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| Bill Daily | |
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 Bill Daily on The Match Game
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| Born | August 30, 1928 Des Moines, Iowa |
Bill Daily is an American comedian and comic actor, and a veteran of many television sitcoms, born in Des Moines, Iowa, August 30, 1928.
Daily's father died when Bill was very young, and consequently he was raised by his mother and various other family members. In 1939, Daily and his family moved to Chicago, where he spent the rest of his youth. Upon high school graduation, Daily left home to try to carve out a life as a musician, playing bass with countless jazz bands in countless clubs across the Midwest.
It was in his traveling-musician days that Daily found his true calling: comedy. He began to do stand-up in the same clubs he had once filled with music, and he soon moved up in the comedy ranks to the point where he was playing some of the bigger clubs in the country.
After graduating from the Goodman Theatre School, Daily worked for the NBC television station in Chicago, WMAQ, as an announcer and floor manager. He eventually became a staff director. Daily recently recalled for PBS how one day, preparing for a Chicago-area Emmy Award telecast, he asked a young local comedian to come up with a routine about press agents. The bit, "Abe Lincoln vs. Madison Avenue," became an early hit for the performer -- a young Bob Newhart.
Television executives liked Daily's clean-cut looks and superb comic timing, so by the mid-1960's he earned guest spots on sitcoms like My Mother the Car and Bewitched. Veteran sitcom writer Sidney Sheldon noticed Daily in one of his myriad small roles, and decided that he would be perfect for a character in his new sitcom, I Dream of Jeannie. Looking back, it was the moment that made Daily's career.
The part on Jeannie was that of an U.S. Army test pilot[1] and NASA astronaut named Roger Healey, who would be sidekick and best friend to Larry Hagman's main character, Tony Nelson. It was a dream part for Daily, who made playing Healey look effortless; it was said that Daily never won any awards for his portrayals because he made it look too easy -- people thought he was simply playing himself. While Daily enjoyed his work on Jeannie, Hagman decidedly did not. Daily was witness to countless Hagman tantrums on the set, but he and Barbara Eden stood behind Hagman, citing a substance problem and the progressively poorer scripts on Jeannie as the roots of Hagman's fits.
In 1972, two years after Jeannie was canceled, Daily was back at work, in what is perhaps his signature role -- commercial-airline navigator Howard Borden in The Bob Newhart Show. Borden, who lived across the hall from Bob Newhart's Bob Hartley character, was essentially an extension of the Roger Healey character, but with decidedly more depth. A divorcee, Borden struggled with being there for his son while keeping his flying schedule. The show was an enormous hit, far beyond Jeannie ever was, and Daily was now immortalized in the annals of television history. Daily would also occasionally serve as a panelist on the 1970s CBS reincarnation of The Match Game; after Richard Dawson's departure, Daily was a regular in the lower tier middle seat for the last three-plus years of the show's CBS and syndicated run. After six years of success, The Bob Newhart Show ended its run, and in 1978 Daily was looking for work again.
For the two years that followed The Bob Newhart Show, Daily returned to stand-up, but in 1980, after years of making a living as a second banana, Daily was offered his own show. Called Small and Frye, the show featured Daily as a neurotic doctor; it lasted only three months before being canceled. In 1988, Daily tried his hand again at starring roles, this time as another doctor on the sitcom Starting From Scratch. It fared only mildly better than Frye, and was canceled after one season. Ironically, Daily's most notable post-Newhart role was another supporting one, that of Larry the Psychiatrist on the cult favorite ALF (1986).
In his personal life, Daily very much resembled the Roger Healey character. An unabashed swinging bachelor in the 1960's, Daily admits that he continued that lifestyle even after marrying his wife Pat in the late sixties; in 1976, Pat and Bill divorced. Daily has 2 adopted children (a son and a daughter). His son Patrick is a key grip in Hollywood. He married again in the late 1970's to Vivian, with whom he traveled on the road performing "Lover's Leap" for two years. He later divorced her, and remarried again in 1993, to Becky, with whom he currently lives in Albuquerque, NM. Though retired, he still does some comedy and the occasional TV guest appearance, in addition to directing at a local children's theatre. Also, he guest-hosts on KBQI 107.9 radio station in Albuquerque, NM, and is slated to appear in "Horrorween", coming out in time for Halloween, 2007.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Roger Healey is often erroneously said to be in the U.S. Air Force, but the military uniform he wears is U.S. Army, as indicated by its color, stripes, and other insignia (especially the 'scrambled eggs' on his hat). Although NASA astronauts are frequently from the Air Force, they also come from other branches of the military. In fact, on the 1969 Jeannie episode ‘Around the World in 80 Blinks,’ Richard Mulligan portrays an astronaut named ‘Commander Wingate’; commander is a rank in the U.S. Navy.
