DAVID HEDISON

(20 May 1927 - 18 July 2019)

The American actor David Hedison, who has died aged 92, was born Ara David Heditsian of Armenian descent to Albert David Heditsian, a jeweller, and his wife Rose Bogosian, in Providence, Rhode Island. His parents wished him to join the family business, but Hollywood beckoned and, after serving in the US Navy, young Al (as he was called) joined a local acting school in Manhattan after enrolling at Brown University. He then went on to study at the HB Studio in Greenwich Village and at The Actors Studio. He received an award for his part in A Month in the Country off-Broadway which led him to receive offers in films, although not before he had worked as a radio announcer. His first major film role, after some television work and a part in The Enemy Below with Robert Mitchum, was playing scientist Andrḗ Delambre in The Fly (1958). That was followed by Son of Robin Hood (actually shot on Wimbledon Common), The Lost World, Raoul Walsh’s Marines, Let’s Go with Tom Tryon and George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told.
By then he was known as David Hedison and as such landed a major TV role - Captain Crane - in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (over a hundred episodes, 1964-68) and that is mainly what he is still remembered for. He did more television and then played James Bond’s friend Felix Leiter in Live and Let Die (1973) with Roger Moore. Television took up the rest of the 1970s until Andrew V. McLaglen’s North Sea Hijack and Bryan Forbes’s The Naked Face, both with Roger Moore again. He played Felix Leiter once more with new Bond Timothy Dalton in Licence to Kill, but otherwise he was mainly in demand for many of the popular TV series: Cannon, Benson, Charlie’s Angels, Hart to Hart, Dynasty and The Colbys, Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote. His career ended on a low note in Eric Stoltz’s 2017 film Confessions of a Teenage Jesus Jerk. David Hedison was married to the producer Bridget Hedison who died in 2016. They have two daughters, Alexandra and Serena.

MICHAEL DARVELL