Acting
Apr 3, 1914
Short Hills, New Jersey, United States
Richard Coogan
Acting
Biography
Richard Coogan (born April 4, 1914) is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Captain Video from 1949-1950. Born in Short Hills, New Jersey, Coogan worked in radio for some time, including appearing as Abie Levy in Abie's Irish Rose. He also appeared on Broadway in five different productions between 1945 and 1955, all of them short-lived except for Diamond Lil with Mae West, and The Rainmaker. He was still appearing on Broadway with West when he took the role of Captain Video on the DuMont Television Network on June 27, 1949. After the live telecast each day, ending at about 7:30 p.m. EST, he would take a cab to the theatre where Diamond Lil was playing. As the popularity of Captain Video increased, Coogan grew less and less comfortable with both the role and the very, very low budget of the production. He left Captain Video in December 1950, replaced by Al Hodge, who played the part for the remainder of the run of the series, until April 1, 1955. Hodge became so completely identified with the character that he was never able to escape it. Coogan transferred to the soap opera Love of Life, where he played the heroic Paul Raven. Between 1954 and 1961, Coogan appeared in such films as Three Hours to Kill, The Revolt of Mamie Stover, Vice Raid, and Girl on the Run. On the NBC television series The Californians (1957–1959) set in the San Francisco gold rush of the 1850s, Coogan appeared as Marshal Matthew Wayne, a character who struck most viewers and critics as a deliberate clone of Gunsmoke's Marshal Matt Dillon. He also had a continuing role on the police procedural series Vice Raid (1960–1961), as Sergeant Whitney Brandon. During 1951–1963 he guest-starred on a number of other TV series, mainly Westerns such as Gunsmoke, Laramie, Bonanza, Maverick, Stagecoach West, Cheyenne, Sugarfoot, Bronco, and Wichita Town, as well as detective series such as Perry Mason, Surfside 6, and 77 Sunset Strip. Coogan retired from film and television around 1964. In later life he was best known as a professional golfer and golf instructor. Description above from the Wikipedia article Richard Coogan, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Feature Films (4)
A hootchy-kootchy whodunit set at a small seedy carnival where a reporter tries to discover who killed his boss while his girlfriend inexplicably joins the burlesque show!
Girl on the Run
After three years on the run, Jim Guthrie returns with the scar of a rope burn on his neck. In a flashback, we learn how he was framed for murder but then escaped from the lynch mob just as he was about to be hung. Tired of running, he has returned to find the real killer and the Sheriff has given him just three hours to do it.
Three Hours to Kill
In the early ’40s, a San Francisco prostitute is run out of town just as World War II has begun to intensify. She settles down in Hawaii, hoping to start a new life.
The Revolt of Mamie Stover
Television & Series (18)
Stu Bailey and Jeff Spencer are the wisecracking, womanizing private-detective heroes of this Warner Brothers drama. They work out of an office located at 77 Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, California, right next door to a snazzy restaurant where Kookie works as a valet. The finger-snapping, slang-talking Kookie occasionally helps Stu and Jeff with their cases, and eventually becomes a full-fledged member of the detective agency. Rex Randolph and J.R. Hale also join the firm, and Suzanne is their leggy secretary.
77 Sunset Strip
Cheyenne Bodie was a big man, a former army scout who went west after the American Civil War and drifted from job to job, here a cowboy, there a lawman, and always a larger-than-life hero. CHEYENNE is an American western television series of 108 black-and-white episodes broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1963. The show was the first hour-long western, and in fact the first hour-long dramatic series of any kind, with continuing characters, to last more than one season. It was also the first series to be made by a major Hollywood film studio which did not derive from its established film properties, and the first of a long chain of Warner Brothers original series produced by William T. Orr.
Cheyenne
Captain Video and His Video Rangers is an American science fiction television series, which was aired on the DuMont Television Network, and was the first series of its kind on American television. The series aired between June 27, 1949 and April 1, 1955, originally Monday through Saturday at 7pm ET, and then Monday through Friday at 7pm ET. A separate 30-minute spinoff series, The Secret Files of Captain Video, aired Saturday mornings, alternating with Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, from September 5, 1953 to May 29, 1954 for a total of 20 episodes.
Captain Video and His Video Rangers
Surfside 6 was an ABC television series which aired from 1960 to 1962. The show centered on a Miami Beach detective agency set on a houseboat and featured Troy Donahue as Sandy Winfield II; Van Williams as Kenny Madison; and Lee Patterson as Dave Thorne. Diane McBain co-starred as socialite Daphne Dutton, whose yacht was berthed next to their houseboat. Margarita Sierra also had a supporting role as Cha Cha O'Brien, an entertainer who worked at The Boom Boom Room, a popular Miami Beach hangout at the Fontainebleau Hotel, directly across the street from Surfside 6. Surfside 6 was in fact a real address in Miami Beach, where an unrelated houseboat was moored at the time; it can also be seen in the sweeping aerial establishing shot of the Fontainebleu in 1964's Goldfinger.
