Richard Eyer
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Richard Ross Eyer (born May 6, 1945, in Santa Monica, California)[1] is a third grade teacher in the Bishop, California foothills of the Sierra Nevada, who was a juvenile actor during the 1950s and 1960s. He is the older brother of Robert Eyer, another child actor of the period. Strange as it may seem, the two brothers were born on the same date, May 6, three years apart. [2]
In 1960–1961, Eyer was cast in the role of the teenaged David "Davey" Kane on the ABC television Western series Stagecoach West, having portrayed the fictional son of stagecoach co-owner Simon Kane, played by the late Robert Bray. The series, a production of Dick Powell's Four Star Television, also starred Wayne Rogers, later Trapper John on M*A*S*H.[3]
Eyer was a boy with "'the clean-cut, all-American look" who won "personality contests" and other competitions before he made his film debut in the early 1950s. In 1956, he was the youngster who runs "afowl" of the goose in director William Wyler's Friendly Persuasion. Science fiction viewers will remember him for the starring role in The Invisible Boy, which was producer Nicholas Nayfack's independent sequel to MGM's Forbidden Planet.[4] In The Desperate Hours (1955), Eyer played Frederic March's dangerously impulsive son.[5]His last film was The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad in 1958. He portrayed the metallic-voiced Baronni the Genie.[5]
In a 1995 interview, Eyer credited his mother for the promotion of his acting career. "It was all her work that did it. I had curly hair, freckles, and people would say what a cute kid he was and all that; so my mother entered me in some children’s personality contests, and I won one of these which had been held at the Hollywood Bowl, and I guess that one was the springboard in getting me started. After that, I was hired for some television commercials and some modeling jobs, and this led into other things. . . . I was around fourteen when I did Stagecoach West. . . . My last role was at age 21, appearing in an episode of [ABC's] Combat!."[6]
He appeared in more than one hundred episodes of various television programs, including ABC's Arrest and Trial and Stoney Burke starring Jack Lord, NBC's Wagon Train and Mr. Novak starring James Franciscus, and CBS's Lassie, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and General Electric Theater hosted by Ronald Reagan. [4]
Eyer is divorced from Laurie L. Eyer (born 1947) of Rancho Mirage. He is the father of a daughter, Samantha Rae Eyer, and twin sons, Benjamin Adam Eyer and Andrew Z. Eyer.
