Lloyd Bridges

The man who learned to breathe underwater

Lloyd Bridges was seventy years old when he decided that being serious wasn't getting him anywhere. In 1980 he accepted the role of Steve McCroskey in Airplane! and blew up his own leading-man action image in front of millions of viewers. He broke into movies through the back door with a contract paying 75 dollars a week at Columbia Pictures during the 1940s. There he learned that the job meant being available and not complaining too much, because the competition was fierce.

He made dozens of B-movies where he had barely three lines. But his athletic build kept him on the radar of casting directors looking for tough, dependable men. He appeared in High Noon in 1952 as the sheriff's deputy and proved he could hold his own opposite Gary Cooper. That was his real graduation in the industry before political troubles came knocking.

His real break came with the sea as the backdrop.

In 1958 he agreed to star in Sea Hunt without knowing the show would run for four seasons. He played Mike Nelson in 155 episodes and became the most recognizable face of scuba diving worldwide. Audiences believed Bridges was a professional expert diver, but in reality he learned the basics only a few weeks before production began. The crew used stunt doubles for the most dangerous scenes, although he insisted on going down to the bottom whenever insurance allowed.

But television was a double-edged sword back then.

Blacklists and closed doors

His rise came to an abrupt halt because of politics. During McCarthy's witch hunt, Lloyd Bridges's name was linked to left-wing groups, and the FBI began keeping a close watch on his movements. Hollywood turned its back on him for a brief but suffocating period that threatened to end his career for good. He had to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee to admit that years earlier he had belonged to a radical theater group.

That confession saved his bank account but forced him to work twice as hard to win back the trust of the major Hollywood studios. For years he hopped from series to series and took supporting roles in productions that were not always up to his level. He appeared in more than 150 projects across film and television before finding his way back to mass stardom.

Then came the zany comedy.

When directors Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers called to offer him Airplane! in 1980, he thought it was a tasteless joke. They wanted him to play an air traffic controller with complete seriousness while the world fell apart around him. Bridges took the challenge because he needed the work. He ended up stealing every scene he was in and discovered that young audiences connected with his deadpan face far more than with his old dramas.

The patriarch of a dynasty

Bridges didn't just look after his own name. Married to Dorothy Dean Simpson since 1938, he maintained an unusual degree of family stability in the hills of California. His sons Jeff and Beau inherited the acting profession, and he made sure they understood that this was a business of pure endurance. In 1991 he appeared in Hot Shots!, parodying his military image once again and scoring a huge box office hit.

His last on-screen appearance was in the film Mafia!, released in 1998.

He died of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles on March 10, 1998 at the age of 85. At the time, his net worth exceeded 15 million dollars thanks to smart management of his television contracts. The funeral was private and without major media coverage, at the express wish of his widow. The actor left behind an archive of more than 200 professional credits recorded in industry databases.