George Peppard

George William Peppard (October 1, 1928 – May 8, 1994) was an American actor.

George William Peppard Jr. was born October 1, 1928, in Detroit, the son of building contractor George Peppard Sr. and opera singer and voice teacher Vernelle Rohrer.

His mother had five miscarriages before giving birth to George.

His family lost all their money in the Depression, and his father had to leave George and his mother in Detroit while he went looking for work.

He graduated from Dearborn High School in Dearborn, Michigan in 1946.

Peppard enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on July 8, 1946, and rose to the rank of corporal, leaving the Corps at the end of his enlistment in January 1948.

During 1948 and 1949, he studied civil engineering at Purdue University where he was a member of the Purdue Playmakers theatre troupe and Beta Theta Pi fraternity.

He became interested in acting, being an admirer of Walter Huston in particular.

"I just decided I didn't want to be an engineer," he said later.

"It was the best decision I ever made."

Peppard made his stage debut in 1949 at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

After moving to New York City, Peppard enrolled in the Actors Studio, where he studied the Method with Lee Strasberg.

He did a variety of jobs to pay his way during this time, such as working as a disc jockey, being a radio station engineer, teaching fencing, driving a taxi and being a mechanic in a motorcycle repair shop.

He worked in summer stock in New England and appeared at the open air Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon for two seasons.

(It took longer than normal because he dropped out for a year when his father died in 1951 and he had to finish his father's jobs.) He also trained at the Pittsburgh Playhouse.

While living in Pittsburgh, Peppard worked as a radio DJ at WLOA in Braddock, Pennsylvania.

While giving a weather update, he famously called incoming snow flurries "flow snurries".

This was an anecdote he repeated in several later interviews, including one with former NFL player Rocky Bleier for WPXI.

In addition to acting, Peppard was a pilot.

Peppard then transferred to Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1955.

In August 1955 he appeared in the play The Sun Dial.

He worked as a cab driver until getting his first part in "Lamp Unto My Feet".

He appeared with Paul Newman, in The United States Steel Hour (1956), as the singing, guitar-playing baseball player Piney Woods in Bang the Drum Slowly, directed by Daniel Petrie.

He appeared in an episode of Kraft Theatre, "Flying Object at Three O'Clock High" (1956).

In March 1956 Peppard was on stage off Broadway in Beautiful Changes.

In April 1956, he appeared in a segment of an episode of "Cameras Three" performing from The Shoemaker's Holiday; The New York Times called his performance "beguiling".

In July 1956, he signed to make his film debut in The Strange One directed by Jack Garfein, based on the play End as a Man.

It was the first film from Garfein as director and Calder Willingham as producer, plus for Peppard, Ben Gazzara, Geoffrey Horne, Pat Hingle, Arthur Storch and Clifton James.

Filming took place in Florida.

"I wouldn't say I was nervous," said Peppard, "just excited."

On his return to New York he performed in "Out to Kill" on TV for Kraft.

In September he joined the cast of Girls of Summer directed by Jack Garfein with Shelley Winters, Storch and Hingle, plus a title song by Stephen Sondheim.

This reached Broadway in November.

Brooks Atkinson said Peppard "expertly plays a sly, malicious dance teacher."

It had only a short run.

The bulk of his work around this time was for television: The Kaiser Aluminum Hour ("A Real Fine Cutting Edge", directed by George Roy Hill), Studio One in Hollywood ("A Walk in the Forest"), The Alcoa Hour ("The Big Build-Up" with E.G. Marshall ), Matinee Theatre ("End of the Rope" with John Drew Barrymore, "Thread That Runs So True", "Aftermath"), Kraft Theatre ("The Long Flight"), Alfred Hitchcock Presents ("The Diplomatic Corpse", with Peter Lorre directed by Paul Henreid), and Suspicion ("The Eye of Truth" with Joseph Cotten based on a script by Eric Ambler).

He secured a major role as struggling writer Paul Varjak when he starred alongside Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and later portrayed a character based on Howard Hughes in The Carpetbaggers (1964).

He spent a portion of his 1966 honeymoon training to fly his Learjet in Wichita, Kansas.

On television, he played the title role of millionaire insurance investigator and sleuth Thomas Banacek in the early-1970s mystery series Banacek.

He played Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, the cigar-smoking leader of a renegade commando squad in the 1980s action television series The A-Team.