‘Courtship of Eddie’s Father’ Star Brandon Cruz Fights to Keep Bill Bixby’s Memory Alive

Dealing With the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce

He contacted the late Johnny Grant, given the honorary title of Mayor of Hollywood by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. The office he occupied until his death in 2008 primarily served as emcee of the award ceremonies for new plaques on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Brandon was was told that a star costs money to get, about $20,000 (the price has gone up considerably since then). He was shocked and certainly didn’t have that kind of money to drop for it. But then, back in 2007 Marvel Studios put The Incredible Hulk, starring Edward Norton and Liv Tyler, into production. Brandon was approached about giving permission for a clip from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father to be used. He signed off, having a conversation with the studio, Universal, about financing the Bixby star as a great promotional tie-in for the film’s release. Everyone thought it was a great idea, but then nothing happened. “When the film premiered,” he says, “I asked them what happened with the Bixby star and they said, ‘Oh, we forgot.’”

Going back to the start, he re-approached the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and was told in no uncertain terms that because Bixby was dead and wasn’t famous anymore, it’s not something that would happen unless somebody else raised the necessary funds.

“More time went on and about two-and-a-half years ago, almost three, I realized that GoFundMe existed,” reflects Brandon, who has launched a campaign to raise funds for Bixby’s star, “and that people were getting a lot of money raised really quickly to do different things. I thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to do a memorial for Bill and I want the fans to do it. I don’t want to involve Hollywood.’ I mean, they turned their backs. I had a huge movie studio and their PR people, and they had the money. They spent $20,000 back then on the Hulk invitations to the premiere. It would’ve been nothing for them. But, again, I felt let down by Hollywood.”

Early Days for Brandon and ‘The Courtship of Eddie’s Father’

Brandon Edwin Cruz, born May 28, 1962, in Bakersfield, California, has had a love-hate relationship with Hollywood from the very start. At the age of five, he auditioned for and was cast in the role of Eddie Corbett on ABC’s The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, which ran from 1969-72. The show was about widower and magazine publisher Tom Corbett, who is raising his young son alone. Eddie, believing his father should be married again, attempts to play matchmaker as often as he can with the women that Tom dates. The show also stars Miyoshi Umeki as housekeeper Mrs. Livingston and James Komack (series creator and producer) as magazine photographer Norman Tinker.

“James Komack was the producer and writer and costar, and directed, but Bill set the tone of what went on, on the set,” Brandon recalls. “If Bill was happy, everybody was happy, because he was the easiest guy to work with when he was happy, and that was pretty much all the time. He was a very private guy, he didn’t let a lot out. I remember his dad passed away while we were filming, and he walked right on the set. Everybody was really quiet and he looked around and said, ‘Hey, we have a job to do. Let’s do it. If you want to talk to me afterward once we wrap, then we can talk. But right now, let’s work.’ And that’s the way Bill was. Private stuff was for private times.”

Reel Life Becomes Real for Brandon

Bixby, he says, would go out of his way to talk to people and lift them up. “Just a generous, giving professional, you know? He showed everybody how to treat other people nicely. A guy got fired on the set one day, and I don’t know what he’d done, but he was one of my favorite guys on the crew. I told Bill, ‘Hey, I really like that guy.’ And he got his job back, because Bill wanted me happy. It’s just the way he worked. It was a big family and everybody loved working on that show.”

Reel life in a sense became real in terms of the relationship between Bixby and Brandon. Describing his own family’s situation as being “f’d up,”  the weekends became something that he looked forward to.

“Bill would take me to his beach house a lot,” he says, “or we would go to Palm Springs or Las Vegas. We’d just hop in a car and drive around. It was just amazing. He really just looked out for everybody. He was a giving, caring professional. Very private, but nobody could ever say a bad word about him. He was the most beloved guy in Hollywood, then he passed and that title basically went to John Ritter.”

Reluctantly Meeting Elvis

One intriguing thing about speaking to Brandon Cruz is that the longer you do so, the more you get the sense of him being someone that demands the world take him on his terms or not bother at all. Based on the memories he shares, it’s obvious that that attitude was within him since childhood. For instance, there was the time that Elvis Presley came to the set of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father after Brandon refused to go see him on the MGM lot. Bixby had appeared in the Elvis films Clambake (1967) and Speedway (1968).

“When he was at MGM, he called Bill and said, ‘Come on over,’” shares Brandon. “I don’t know what he was doing there, but he was on another stage. During lunch I would play cards with the grips and the electricians, who were part of the crew. Bill walks up and says, ‘Hey, Brandon, we’ve got to go.’ I said, ‘I’m playing cards.’ He says, ‘No, we’ve been summoned,’ but I said, ‘I’ve got a good hand and I’m playing cards.’ I just didn’t want to go anywhere. He had to call Elvis and say, ‘The kid’s not budging,’ so Elvis came to meet me. All I remember is this big white jumpsuit, diamond and gold rings on every finger. Big old hand in my face. I shook his hand and kept playing cards. I wasn’t a big Elvis fan.”

As he shares those memories, you can’t help but feel that there was a certain arrogance to that kid which may or may not have been warranted. But he offers an explanation with no hint of an apology for his behavior: “Bill told me everybody was the same, so there was no being star struck. We got to go to the Emmys the year Bill got nominated, and there weren’t that many kids there. I was bored. I didn’t get to watch a lot of TV, because I was busy making it. I knew who some of the people were, and there were definitely celebrities there, but it wasn’t a big deal.”

Acting and Reacting With Sammy Davis, Jr.

What was, was when Sammy Davis, Jr. made a guest appearance on The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. “Now here’s the thing,” Brandon says, “Bill knew what he wanted me to be, and why I got the part, was just a normal kid that got along well with him. Sammy came in fresh off a jet from Vegas, and he walked in with a martini and a cigarette, and in a tux with his tie undone. He’s Sammy. He’s just talking and telling stories. He’s sitting in the makeup chair, and I’m sitting next to him, and he’s entertaining, cracking us up, telling everybody stories. My mom and a couple of other people were hanging around, because he was a big deal.

“I had to go off and do some school,” he continues, “I come back in to do the scene, and Bill always liked to roll the camera during rehearsal, because we might get some good moments. They roll the camera and Sammy has the first line. He starts talking and I just start staring at him, because he’s not Sammy anymore. He has a different voice, different mannerisms. Then I have the next line and I’m just staring at him. I think Bill was directing and he says, ‘Okay, cut. Um, Brandon?’ I was, like, ‘Oh, uh, yeah …’ He goes, ‘Okay, everybody, Brandon just saw acting for the first time. Now let’s do it again.’ In my head I’m thinking, ‘Well, I’m like all these actors. I’m going to act.’ Sammy does his line, and I came up with some corny voice and Bill is, like, ‘Okay, cut. Uh, Brandon, no acting.’ When we had a talk about it later — I mean years later — I said, ‘When you told me no acting, what exactly were you talking about?’ He said, ‘Acting is the art of reacting normally in an abnormal situation. You’ve got the camera, the crew, all these people, but you want to appear normal. Whether the role requires you to be weird or not, you have to be whatever the director and the script and the character are calling for. You were a 7-year-old kid. That’s what we wanted. That’s what we always wanted you to be. We never wanted you to be an actor. We wanted you to be Brandon.’ That’s why when people call me an actor, it’s, like, ‘I don’t think so. I’m a re-actor.’”

For Bill Bixby, Each of His Characters Was Within Him

Which, to go off on a slight tangent, was probably one of Bixby’s greatest strengths as a performer. Whatever the role, there was a naturalness and a sincerity to his performances.

“Nothing ever required Bill to be something that he wasn’t,” Brandon muses. “I mean, all of that stuff was within him and it didn’t seem forced. In the case of Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Bill was a single guy, very popular, very famous, number one on the bachelor list in Hollywood, and he portrayed a dad very easily. He was just … believable. I saw him do comedy, like The Apple Dumpling Gang; he did an episode of The Streets of San Francisco where he played a serial killing, cross-dressing nun. We watched it during the weekend at my grandparents’ house. My grandma had just visited the set, and that Monday morning she walked up to Bill and said, ‘Hey, I saw you on Streets of San Francisco.’ He said, ‘Well, thank you, Dorothy,’ and she said, ‘I hated you.’ He smiled and said, ‘That’s good. That’s what I intended. Thank you very much. It’s the best compliment I could get.’ He was an actor, he knew how to do it, but it didn’t seem out of the question that he could be that crazy guy. He knew how to do it naturally.  He wasn’t my dad, but, God, a lot of people thought he was. You know? A whole country and a lot of the world saw that show and really thought that was my dad.”

Things Collapse in Season 3

The Courtship of Eddie’s Father saw its ratings drop dramatically in the third season, which ultimately led to its cancellation. The blame for this Brandon puts firmly at the feet of creator/producer/costar/director James Komack, who decided that he wanted a bigger role on the show and started having scripts centered more on Norman Tinker.

“It was getting away from being about me trying to get Bill a wife and our relationship, and then the kooky characters around us, and it turned into the James Komack show,” he opines. “If you watch the last season, it’s a lot less about Bill and I and a lot more about Jimmy. I think because of that we lost viewers and we were canceled. It was pretty cut and dry.”

Their Connection Through the Years

Which reminds him of a connection the he and Bixby made that lasted until the end of his life. “In 1969 or ’70, Bill forgot my birthday,” he laughs, “and the next day, he gave me a bicycle. I looked at him and said, ‘Oh, that’s very sweet, but my birthday was yesterday.’ The following January, the day after his birthday I called him, because it fell on a weekend, and that happened for the next consecutive 20-plus years; we called each other the day after our birthdays to say Happy Birthday. If I didn’t talk to Bill in a year, I would talk to him on his birthday or hear from him the day after my birthday.”

Brandon Makes the Rounds as a TV Guest Star

When The Courtship of Eddie’s Father ended its run in 1972, everybody went their separate ways, as is wont to happen, though Brandon and Bill did stay in touch. In fact, when Brandon easily scored guest starring roles on shows like Kung Fu, Medical Center, Gunsmoke and, later on, The Incredible Hulk, he was convinced that “Bill was pulling some strings. I know he knew all those producers and writers and actors, and I really think he just kept me busy up until I was about 13. The show ended when I was 10 and for a couple of years I consistently worked as a guest star. And besides the show, we did a circus TV special, a teen movie called Married is Better, and some commercials for Kelloggs.”

An Incredible (Hulk) Reunion

In 1975, he was cast in the feature The Bad News Bears, after which Brandon found himself drawn to surfing, skating and drugs, all of which he found more pleasurable than acting. But, as noted, Bixby asked him to guest on The Incredible Hulk, which he was happy to do.

“I guess I can tell this story,” he offers tentatively. “I was being driven to the set of The Incredible Hulk by my grandpa, I think. I had some pot on me. I was in Bill’s motor home and pulled it out. I don’t know what I was going to do with it, but somebody started to come in the motor home. I jumped in the bathroom and thought, ‘I’ve got to stash this somewhere.’ I just pulled down the shaving bag that was sitting on the counter, unzipped it and in there was some pot and a pipe. I’m like, ‘Oh, perfect, I’ll just stash it in here with this.’ I went to the set, we did the scene and I couldn’t get back to the motor home. Bill did before me.

“A couple of hours later he walks up to me and goes, ‘Hey, um, did you leave something in my motor home?’ I just looked at him and smiled and he said, ‘It’s better than mine,’ and he walked away. I was, like, ‘Oh, well, Bill’s cool.’ The next day I got back into the motor home and all of my good, green weed was gone, and he had this dirty brown s–t that was just … well, I thought Bill would’ve had better pot, but I had better pot than Bill.” Ah, the ‘70s.

Going Punk

When you learn more about Brandon’s background, it’s hardly surprising that his life went in the direction that it did, filled with drug use and finding himself an important player on the punk rock scene in the late 1970s and early ‘80s as well as a part of the bands Dr. Know and, from 2001-03, the Dead Kennedys. “Surfing and punk rock,” he says, “probably saved my life.

“I grew up around hippies and bikers and drunks,” he continues. “That was my upbringing. Everybody around me either surfed or was a biker. When I would be booked for appearances while doing Eddie’s Father, I would ride in on a motorcycle with several other almost identically clad people as the guy who drove me in. He was in a certain motorcycle group, and I’ll leave it at that. I lived the Sons of Anarchy life before it was hip. Those were the guys who watched out for me. I was raised by wolves, basically. It was just a pack of kids running around the beach and just did whatever we wanted with no supervision. Then, once I got notoriety and fame and everything, I had to not hang around little kids anymore, so I hung around the teenagers whose attitude was, ‘Who cares who he is? The kid’s cool. He brings us weed. He’ll steal a case of beer from his did for us if we want. We’re going surfing in Malibu, do you want to go?’ I’m like 10 or 11 years old and it’s, like, ‘Yeah, I want to go.’ There was no, ‘Let me ask my mom,’ because I didn’t know where she was. So I would just go with the older guys.”

As if that wasn’t enough, he was also nearly the victim of a kidnapping while at Big Sur at a campground “during some big hippies festival. I don’t really know what was going on, because there was no Internet, no texting and just pay phones. But within not a lot of time, all of a sudden, all these hippies were really scared, because these bikers were riding around looking for who was planning this. I was shoved into a car with two of them and driven out of there very quickly.”

Settling Down … At Last

As he got older, there did reach a point where he began desiring a bit of normalcy in his life, and to have a normal family (about as far removed from his own as he could get). “I didn’t like the chaos that drugs and alcohol brought,” Brandon admits, “but I just kept doing it until I was 34 years old. When I got married and had a kid, my ex-wife said, ‘You know, if you want us to be around, you have to stop doing what you’re doing, because you’re out of control.’ I got sober. That was 22 years ago and a lot of people helped me out.”

Early on in that period he began working in a rehab center after he became sober, and he’s worked with a wide variety of people, including young actors, members of the sports world, some “very one percent of the wealthy type of people,” celebrities and others who are “just trying to get their s–t together.

“I’ve been in a punk band since punk rock started,” he points out, “and I have a lot in common with the people that I work with. All of it just started when I got sober, because I needed to work. I was pretty much unemployable just doing all my stupid stuff that I did before I got sober; just drinking way too much, doing too many drugs. I started really young; I don’t think I drew a sober breath filming Bad News Bears.”

Determined to Do Right by His Kids

There’s no question he takes his life’s work very seriously — in fact, this conversation was interrupted and had to be rescheduled when one of his clients called. “I have to treat it seriously and have,” he says. “My thinking was, ‘Wow, if I can help these people avoid being a complete wash-out and wipe-out in their lives, then maybe I can do some good.’ Now it’s just what I do. To the detriment of my marriage; I took on a whole new way of recovery and helping people. I had to travel a lot and would be gone most of the time. But I always came home. My kids never went without. My kids had a mom and a dad and had consistency and I had a home. I moved my kids off the beach. They weren’t raised where I was raised, and they weren’t raised the way I was. I produced two of the most amazing, wonderful kids, and my son’s middle name is Bixby. I branded him right away, but they weren’t going to be like me.”

His Personal Mission Continues

There’s so much more that has gone on over the years, but beyond his current work, Brandon’s focus is once again on trying to get that star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Bill Bixby — who died on November 21, 1993, from complications arising out of prostate cancer. The effort continues to be an exercise in frustration.

“Trying to raise the money, I did some online interviews,” he emphasizes, “I attempted to call in favors, and everything just fell on deaf ears. I was working and going through a divorce, and sort of dropped off after a while. But I was in London six months ago and got a call from a woman who said, ‘We’re doing a documentary on Bill. Can you be in it?’ So happens I was in England at the time with my band; we were touring. They sent a car and did the interview. That day I got back on GoFundMe and started it back up, and started a Facebook page for the Bill Bixby Star Fund. For a while, the money started coming in again, but slowly. Then, the guy who ran the Incredible Hulk Facebook fan page got a hold of me and said, ‘I’m going to Comic-Con and Lou Ferrigno’s going to be there.’ I didn’t have nice words to say, because I know I’d sent many emails and texts and private messages on Facebook, and nothing. It makes me dislike Hollywood even more, especially because Bill knew a lot of people who could just write this check in a heartbeat and it wouldn’t dent any of them. There are many people who owe a lot of their careers to Bill, but not one of them has helped. Not one person from the cast of Blossom has donated — Mayim Bialik is on that pretty damn popular show and one of the highest paid actresses on television right now, but nothing. But my big beef is Lou Ferrigno.”

Reaching Out to the Fans of Bill Bixby

After being ignored by Hollywood, Brandon has realized that what’s needed is a grassroots campaign to continue the funding.

“It’s what Bill taught me,” he closes, “which is that you did things the right way. This is in memory of Bill. This is not to publicize Bill. This is to honor Bill, which is a totally different thing. This isn’t for Bill’s rich friends to do; this is for the people that he actually meant something to.”

You can check out the Bill Bixby Star Fund’s Facebook page.

THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE S FATHER

For an in depth look at The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, which is currently celebrating its 50th Anniversary, please click here.