He played park ranger dad Rick Marshall on the Sid and
Marty Krofft classic before exiting in a financial dispute.
Hollywood Reporter
By Mike Barnes
June 25, 2024
Spencer Milligan, who starred for Sid and Marty Krofft as
the park ranger and widowed father Rick Marshall on the iconic Saturday morning
kids show Land of the Lost, has died. He was 86.
Milligan died April 18 at his home in Sturgeon Bay,
Wisconsin, his family announced.
Milligan played the heroic father of youngsters Will
Marshall (Wesley Eure) and Holly Marshall (Kathy Coleman) on the first two
seasons of NBC’s Land of the Lost, which featured a mix of live-action and
stop-motion animated dinosaurs. On the sci-fi show, the family is caught in an
earthquake while on a rafting trip and propelled into an alternative universe.
Milligan got famous with his likeness appearing on Land
of the Lost products like lunch boxes, toys and coloring books, but he quit the
show because he said he wasn’t getting paid for that. “We had a difference of
opinion, let’s put it this way,” he told the Associated Press in 2009. “I
thought it was only fair that everyone should get their fair share.”
At the start of the third season, Milligan was replaced
by Ron Harper, who came aboard as Rick’s brother, Jack. The writers explained
all this by having Rick sucked through a time doorway and then Jack stumbling
upon his niece and nephew after having embarked on a search to find them.
Spencer James Milligan was born on Sept. 10, 1937, in Oak
Park, Illinois. He attended Lyon’s Township High School, trained at the Goodman
Theatre in Chicago and received a nice notice for his turn in Come Back, Little
Sheba on a Windy City stage in 1960.
After serving in the U.S. Army through 1966, Milligan
studied acting with Lee Strasberg in New York and with Joan Darling in Los
Angeles and made his onscreen debut as a party host in the future in Woody
Allen’s Sleeper (1973).
Milligan later showed up episodes of such shows as
Gunsmoke, Baretta, McCloud, The Bionic Woman, Alice, The Dukes of Hazzard,
Police Squad! and The New Mike Hammer.
MILLIGAN, Spencer (Spencer James
Milligan)
Born: 9/10/1937, Oak Park, Illinois, U.S.A.
Died: 4/18/2024, Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
Spencer Milligan’s westerns – actor:
Gunsmoke (TV) – 1975 (Jinx Tobin)
Barbary Coast (TV) – 1976 (Williams)
Father Murphy (TV) – 1981 (Arnie Winkler)
The Yellow Rose (TV) – 1984 (Alton Prine)
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