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JODY MCCREA
He was one of the inhabitants of that infamous Southern California beach where Frankie and Annette hung out in the mid-Sixties. At 6’ 3”, Jody McCrea towered over the more diminutive stars of the Beach Blanket set playing the loveable goof-ball Deadhead (later renamed Bonehead) in 6 Beach Party movies. Jody (Joel Dee McCrea) was born in 1934 to actors Joel McCrea and Frances Dee. He was the oldest of three brothers. He went to UCLA majoring in theatre and also threw javelin for their track team. Following a stint in the US Army, he served as a host for a series of recruiting films entitled “Country Style, USA” which featured country musicians.
His first film role was a walk-on in 1955’s “Lucy Gallant” with Jane Wyman and Charlton Heston. Shortly after, he was cast in three of his father’s Westerns 1956’s “The First Texan,” 1957’s “Gunsight Ridge” and “Trooper Hook.” In 1959 he and dad Joel starred in the one-season but critically-acclaimed TV Western, “ Wichita Town.” Joel starred as the town’s marshal and Jody played one of his deputies. But it was not all nepotism. Jody appeared on his own on many shows in the late 50s and early 60s---“Death Valley Days,” “Guestward Ho!” “Kraft Television Theatre,” “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon,” and “Wagon Train.”
On the big screen it seemed he alternated playing Western cowpokes and Navy seamen. His Westerns included 1962’s “The Broken Land” –with a young Jack Nicholson, “Young Guns of Texas”, 1964’s “Law of the Lawless,” and 1965’s “Young Fury.”
It was 1963 when the fortunes of Jody McCrea would change. He would become known to a new generation of movie-goers, stepping out from the shadow of a movie star father (who ironically was not particularly known to the up and coming baby boomers). |
His Seamen roles were in more diverse films. He appeared in 1957’s horror film “The Monster that Challenged the World” an above average B-movie about giant mollusks who emerge from the Salton Sea after an earthquake to take over the world. “All Hands on Deck” was a hilarious 1961 film in which he co-starred with TV stars Gale Gordon, Ann B. Davis, Buddy Hackett and Barbara Eden. And “Operation Bikini”---with a name like that and with stars like Frankie Avalon and Tab Hunter, you would think it was one of Jody’s beach pictures, but in reality it was a submarine movie.