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LUNDIGAN, WILLIAM (1914–1975). American actor.
Lundigan got into the movies through circumstances that
would seem incredible to modern wannabes: while he was working as a radio
announcer in New York, a film producer heard his resonant voice and ordered a
subordinate to find this man and give him a screen test, which suggested that
he had some promise as a screen actor. However, although he had an athletic
appearance and was comfortable in front of the camera, it cannot be said that
he was enormously successful, as anyone would recognize after assessing one's
first two decades in film and concluding that the high point of your career was
a supporting role in two Andy Hardy films. But soon, there emerged a new media
called television in need of some handsome men with resonant voices, and by the
1950s Lundigan was primarily supporting himself with steady work as a host and
announcer for various television series.
But at this point, producer Ivan TORS was in need of a cheap
leading man for his forthcoming science fiction film, Riders to the Stars,
and either he or director Richard CARLSON decided, wisely, that
Lundigan would be an ideal choice to play the ex-pilot and college professor
recruited to fly into space in order to catch a meteor. The result was one of
the rare performances in the spacesuit films of the 1950s when you actually
find yourself caring about whether or not the hero survives his perilous
journey into space; for Lundigan was able to perfectly anticipate the
personality of the men who would later become America's astronauts—outwardly
emotionless and professional at all times, but willing in private moments to
open up and reluctantly acknowledge a touch of poetry in his soul.
But Riders to the Stars wasn't the sort of film that
was going to make anyone a star, so Lundigan drifted back into television,
including a similar role in the first episode of Science Fiction Theatre as
a pilot who earnestly insists that he really did see a UFO. But somebody in
the television industry must have remembered Riders to the Stars,
because five years later, Lundigan found himself back in the spaceship again as
the protagonist of the CBS television series Men into Space, the
stalwart Colonel Edward McCauley, and in thirty-eight episodes he again
distinguished himself as America's archetypal astronaut—a fine husband and
father while on Earth, a calm and competent professional during crises in
space, always prepared to don his bulky spacesuit to repair a broken piece of
equipment or search for a missing crewmate. But series writers also entrusted
him with rare bits of dialogue that reflected his awareness of the "awesome and
terrible beauty" of the Moon and outer space. Watching all thirty-eight
episodes of the series, one sees McCauley growing as a character, and Lundigan
capably settling into the role, helping to make this unheralded series
surprisingly rewarding.
However, audiences of that era much preferred the earthbound
whimsy of CBS's other 1959 venture into science fiction, Rod
SERLING's The Twilight Zone,
leading to the cancellation of Men into Space after one season and
effectively ending Lundigan's career in science fiction film. It is easy to imagine
Lundigan then telling his agent, after enduring so many scenes of awkward
spacesuit maneuvers, that he never wanted to play an astronaut again—and he
never did. Still, his final contribution to the genre again required Lundigan
to wear a special suit—but only a diving suit in The Underwater
City. About a decade later, Lundigan died in his early sixties as a result of lung
congestion, possibly due to all of those Lucky Strikes that he smoked in the
commercials he made for Men into Space's main sponsor. We will never
know what he thought when he watched America's real-life astronauts on
television as they did their William Lundigan imitations in Earth orbit and on
the Moon, but one hopes he understood that he qualified as one of their
unacknowledged precursors. Now, at least in this encyclopedia, he is
unacknowledged no more.
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