Bill Bixby’s Biographer Remembers the Actor: ‘His Story Was One of Determination, Tragedy and Sadness’

What was your inspiration for doing this book?

I was born in ’73, and I have very vivid memories of watching The Incredible Hulk. While I always had a fond regard for Bill, I wasn’t an especially big fan or follower of his. It was in 2000 or 2001 when A&E did a biography on him, which is available on YouTube. I just remember being very moved by it back then. Obviously Bill’s story was one of determination, but also tragedy and sadness. It was just a very compelling story, I felt a bit of a personal connection as well. What Bill and I have in common is that Bill was an only child and I’m an only child. There’s also the fact that we’re the last of our bloodlines, Bill for very tragic reasons and, while my father’s still alive, when he passes away I will be the last of my family. There’s something very poignant about that. There’s a correlation between that profile and your personality and how your life unfolds and in the way you behave. I recognize that in myself and I recognize that in Bill, who, after talking with so many people he knew, was a mysterious man in many ways.

From what research I’ve done, there seemed to be a real dichotomy of this guy who was the kindest human being you’d ever met, yet in his private life he was pretty wild.

As you started talking, I thought you were going to mention the dichotomy of someone who was full of energy and had an intense need to perform and be in the spotlight, but was very private and secretive in his personal life in terms of sharing his thoughts and emotions. Just allowing access into his deeper thoughts and fears and feelings, especially emotions. But in terms of the context of what you just said, Bill was outwardly very gregarious. I described him as a mysterious man, so you might think Bill was introverted, and he was on some level in terms of personal relationships, and allowing access. But he was not introverted at all on the set or in his social life; there he was the opposite. He was also someone who had so much energy and intensity that it was sometimes overwhelming. One of Bill’s closest friends told me she thinks it would be impossible for any woman to have been married to Bill for a long period of time, maybe 20 years or 30 years, because he was just so demanding in terms of energy, in terms of intensity.

One time he went on a date with this woman, one of his friends told me, who was one of these women’s lib people who was very opinionated, very smart. She said she lasted one date with Bill, because he talked all the time and he had many opinions on everything. Sometimes during one thought, he would go from one subject to the other and it was very difficult to maintain that level of energy if you were in conversation with him. Bill very much carried himself as an intellectual and he was very intelligent, but he was self-educated. He dropped out of university and he studied many subjects, developing opinions on all of them. But anyway, if you were having a conversation with Bill and he sensed that you were unable to maintain your part of the conversation, to exist on his intellectual plane, he would just drift away. He wouldn’t be rude, he’d be very polite, smile, but you could tell he wouldn’t be there anymore.

He was no longer engaged, basically, in the conversation.

Exactly. When I spoke to Kristina Holland, who played Tina Rickles on The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, she said, “I was much more introverted than Bill was.” In fact, she said he was overwhelming. Sometimes they’d be at a party and Kristina said that she’d watch Bill standing in the middle of the room, just sucking the oxygen out of it, holding court, dominating, talking. She’d just smile and laugh and say, “Oh, Bill.” Bill walked over to her one time and said, “No, don’t you see? I was being helpful. I was giving information; I was informing this person, I wasn’t being overbearing.” Brenda, his first wife, was the perfect counterpoint to him early in their marriage, because she recognized the way Bill was. When he would behave like that, when he would get very intense and very effusive with the way he talked and the way he was acting, she’d just laugh and say, “Oh, Bill, here you go again.”

What I find fascinating was this contradiction of Bill, of someone who, at a very young age, from when he was a little boy delivering papers, when he was the most flamboyant paperboy in San Francisco, and all the other paperboys looked at him and thought, “Wow, he’s a star.” At 12 years old. Not a real star, but a star amongst their group. Someone who had an intense need for attention and the spotlight, but, like I said, in his personal life, in his personal relationships, he was increasingly secretive, and someone who did not allow access into his deeper thoughts, feelings, fears, emotions.

Why do you think as things went on he was, in a sense, retreating?

You have to go back to his parents, who were like Bill. His mother especially. His parents were not people who showed a lot of affection. They were very emotionally guarded, but his mother was like Bill was early in his life — she was a firecracker. She was so effusive, such a quick wit. She was a character. But it’s that’s stereotypical dynamic we see in many people; I don’t think they said “I love you” much. That’s a cliché, because we’ve seen that dynamic in many people who grew up with parents who just aren’t very affectionate. Being an only child, he sought ways to entertain himself and others, because when you’re an only child, you’re always trying to make friends. But on the other side of that, when he made these friendships, he didn’t want to talk about his family, he didn’t want to talk about his parents, he didn’t want to talk about his father. Especially during World War II, when Bill’s father went overseas, went to the Pacific Theater. This was very traumatic for Bill. He was about 11 years old when his father went over to the Pacific. And his father came back, at the end of the war, maybe two-and-a-half, three years later. That’s about a quarter of his life without a father, and he didn’t want to talk about that with his friends. One of his friends told me he went over to Bill’s apartment and he saw a picture of this handsome man in a Navy uniform. He said, “Is that your father?” He didn’t want to talk about it.

‘Credible’ is an interesting title for the book, because credibility is something that Bill seemed to bring to every role he played.

I hope that tentative title doesn’t sound too cheesy, but it’s obviously a reference to his most famous role in The Incredible Hulk, which is what anyone today who remembers Bill thinks of first. But it does apply to Bill’s persona as an actor and a person, which is that he brought great determination and … competence is a word that is almost a synonym of the world credible. I would describe Bill as an actor in the abstract, but more as a general purpose actor who reflected charm, surface charm, and smartness. But in the particulars of his career, and his most famous roles on My Favorite Martian, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father and The Incredible Hulk, he was someone who reflected the sense of wonder that we experienced when we were watching, particularly My Favorite Martian and Hulk, which are fantasy related shows. He made the implausible seem plausible.

David Copperfield told me Bill’s impact was that of an everyman and through him, whether on My Favorite Martian, when he was dealing with this extraterrestrial being who entered his home, or The Incredible Hulk, and dealing with this monstrous alter ego, he was the everyman and we experienced wonder through him. Through his eyes we experienced a sense of awe and wonder.

Undoubtedly when you went into this project, you had one perception of who Bill Bixby was. Speaking to everyone you have, how has that perception changed?

I went into the book thinking of Bill as a mysterious man who did not have any close personal relationships. Bill had many casual friendships, both in Hollywood and in his high school and college years, but if we define a friend as someone who you confide in during your most difficult periods, or someone that you would rely on to be a godparent to your children, or vice versa, Bill had very few close friends. Paul Williams, who you know as the songwriter, and probably best known from Smokey and the Bandit, talked about the fly-by aspect of Bill’s friendship. Paul and Bill were very close at one period, then he said he just went away. That happened very often. His closest friend was Dick Martin from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In; they were together from the early ’60s and he was very supportive of Bill right to the end. But anyway, I had this image of Bill as a mysterious man, and that’s true. In fact, people I would speak to often said, “After talking about Bill, I realize he was a mysterious man.”

Let me give you an example of that. When Bill did My Favorite Martian, he became very good friends with Pamela Britton. Every weekend for about the first two seasons or so, they would go to Gene Autry‘s country club on the weekend, and Bill would sing and stuff like that. They were very close, and then they just stopped seeing each other. And I mentioned Dick Martin, when Bill got married to Brenda Benet, when I asked Dick’s wife, I said, “Tell me about the wedding to Bill, tell me about Bill and Brenda’s wedding.” She said, “We didn’t go to the wedding.” Bill’s second marriage to Laura Michaels at the end of 1990, this is when Bill was diagnosed with cancer — guess who was at the wedding? It was Dick and Dolly; Dick was the best man. And it was Chuck Caldwell, who was the cinematographer Bill had known for about two or three years. They met on Sledge Hammer!, when Bill directed several episodes, and Chuck shot all those and the three Hulk films between ’88 and ’90. And Chuck and his wife were at the wedding, and that was it. No one else was there.

I had perceptions about the tragedies in Bill’s life, I had a perception — and I’m sure you had this perception too when you saw the documentary — that when Bill and Brenda got divorced after their son died, that his anger toward Brenda was a dispositive factor in her committing suicide. Which of course, puts a pretty negative spin on Bill in terms of how he treated her. Who, much like Bill, went through a tragedy herself. He wasn’t able to get past the anger over her, over the divorce, to feel sympathy for her, what she was going through. Of course, there’s another narrative about Bill’s second wife, who I just mentioned, when Bill was diagnosed with cancer, that after a while she left him. The perception being that Bill was at his weakest point as she walks out on him and abandoned him. Well, that’s true, but it’s not true as well. There’s more to that story too. The thing is, you don’t want to begin with a hypothesis and then put everything to that. I just talked to everyone, and I was actually surprised by how friendly Bill was and how approachable he was. As I said, he had so many casual friendships, and he had so many relationships with women. There’s always certainly some surprises, but some things were what I expected.

His other closest friend, who I’ve gotten to know very well, was a man named Ron Chapman, his best friend from high school. Now I talk about how few relationships Bill had that were extensive and lasted, were lifelong, and Bill’s friendship with Ron was his only lifelong friendship. They met in high school back in the late ’40s, they went to Marine bootcamp together for several years. And although Ron’s life moved away from Bill’s, they kept in touch right until Bill died. Before Bill died, every night he was on the phone with Ron. You’ve heard the expression, some people have a thousand acquaintances, but very few close friends? Well, Bill had many that were more than acquaintances, they were friends.

As I define friendship, that’s definitely true. I mentioned Paul Williams talked about the fly-by aspect of friendship with Bill. Now in the case of that relationship, Paul and Bill were both on drugs for a period, and that was one of the reasons why they went separate ways. Paul told me that he had to get clean, Bill had to get clean. Remember the movie Phantom of the Paradise? Paul was filming in Dallas. It was New Year’s Eve. He loved the movie, but was miserable, because he was away from his wife. Bill and Brenda flew to Dallas and surprised him. And Brenda said to him, “We didn’t want you to be alone on New Year’s Day.” It was such a touching act of friendship, and it showed her how close they were. But as I said, over time, they drifted apart.

What do you think his connection with the audience was, because they certainly still do hold him in high affection?

The passage of time has been very deleterious to Bill’s reputation and legacy, as it is for any actor or actress who is predominantly known for their television work. When I speak to anyone under the age of 40, and I ask them, “Do you know who Bill Bixby is?” they say no. To the degree that anyone remembers Bill in that age bracket, can be attributed to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has kept the Hulk in the forefront of the public eye. Through that, there has been some residual interest and curiosity in Bill’s series. But to the degree that Bill is remembered today is almost disproportionately tied to The Incredible Hulk, and I know people who are aged between 50 and 60 certainly remember Bill. I think of what Gene Wilder once said: “It’s not that I couldn’t do dramatic roles, but why would someone hire me to do a dramatic role when there’s at least 20 or 30 other guys who could do a better job?” I think that was the position Bill was in. I would describe Bill, as I said in the abstract, as a general purpose actor who was very determined, but was either unwilling or unable to allow the audience to have access into his innermost thoughts and feelings. You could see that wall was always there with Bill.

It doesn’t seem that the audience sensed that wall.

As I said, he was an everyman who allowed us to experience a sense of wonder. In The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, he definitely did display warmth, but warmth for Bill was on screen. It was a tremendous determination effort. In my opinion, I think it was manufactured … I would compare him to Ted Danson in the sense that I think Bill was a cold actor. Displaying emotion was not his forte. His forte was charm, being relatable to the audience. He’s a complicated man. Let’s talk about why Bill was suited to television, and why he was not suited to a feature film career. There’s a reason for that. He made several films in the mid-to-late ’60s that were mediocre, maudlin, forgettable efforts. On the big screen he appeared two-dimensional, shallow, wooden, somewhat narcissistic. This is the complete opposite of how he appeared on The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, isn’t it? Warm, relatable, loving. Why was that? Why do you think that was?

The intimacy of television?

The intimacy of television, yes. And I think displaying intimacy was Bill’s biggest challenge as an actor; it was the thing he worked at the most, and I think it was the most difficult thing for him to do. In The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, he was most successful in that. He was connected to that character and show, but, again, in his real life Bill was still the bachelor. Getting married, for Bill, was a very momentous decision. It was the decision about making the commitment to a woman, being married and having children. But for Bill, it was a decision about being a grownup. It was a struggle for him, and a tough decision for him.

In interviews he gave, it seems as though ‘The Courtship of Eddie’s Father’ was the show he was most connected to.

The end of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father marked a major shift in Bill’s career. Not only his career, but his physical appearance and his manner. He wanted to break away from comedic roles, and I know The Courtship of Eddie’s Father isn’t comedic, but it had the aspects of a sitcom — 30 minutes and stuff like that. He wanted to be taken more seriously. From the end of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father in ’72 on, he became increasingly cerebral, secretive. He became the mystery man. Look at when he played Anthony Blake on that show, The Magician. He looked like a magician, didn’t he? With the dark hair, and those piercing eyes, and stuff like that. He also became increasingly introspective. The other thing about The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, what I talked about when he got married to Brenda in 1971, it was a real crossroads for Bill in terms of deciding to follow the rules of adulthood, making a commitment and being a grownup. I think the reason he got married primarily was he wanted to have a child, and that decision was in large part due to the experience on The Courtship of Eddie’s Father.

When he did My Favorite Martian, one of his friends told me, “Bill said, ‘I never want to get married.'” Now listen, he was about 29 years old, he was a good looking young bachelor. That’s not unusual. You ask a lot of 21 year old men who have exciting careers and they’ll say, “I don’t want to be tied down right now.” But he said, “The only reason I’d get married is to have a child.” I think that, to a large degree, that’s what happened. Although Bill and Brenda certainly had a very passionate relationship.

It’s interesting that playing Tom Corbett on ‘The Courtship of Eddie’s Father’ could have had that impact on him.

What people love about that show are the dynamics of the relationship between father and son, a single father who makes mistakes, mistakes not of negligence but of love. Things don’t go perfectly, it’s a bit ugly. The ugly side of parenting, you know what I mean? That’s what they find believable.

The impression is that that show was canceled due to declining ratings and a shift to focus more on producer James Komack’s character of Norman Tinker.

Let’s talk about why each of the three series that Bill is best known for, why all of them, with the possible exception of the Hulk, which ran for 82 episodes, seemed to end before they realized their full potential. It feels like these shows were poised to go much longer than they did. There are reasons for each of their demises. My Favorite Martian had declining ratings, but also, you had Ray Walston, who had become a very malignant presence, I would say, on the set of that show, who was very unhappy. The Courtship of Eddie’s Father had declining ratings, but you’ve heard the narrative that James Komack wanted to take the show in a different direction. I don’t think that happened in the third season, I think that’s what was going to happen. I think his character was going to be more a focus, and I don’t think Bill liked that. One of Bill’s friends told me that Bill was the one who pulled the plug on that show. And the Hulk ran five years, but, again, the ratings had declined. That’s the most obvious reason why a show gets canceled. It was certainly a reason why The Courtship of Eddie’s Father was canceled, but there were other reasons as well that the Hulk had to end. One of the reasons was the emotional baggage that Bill had accumulated in that show, not because of the show, of course, but because of what happened in Bill’s personal life with the death of his son, the divorce and Brenda’s suicide.

You think it just became too much?

In truth, it was good for him to get away. He also was finding himself drawn more to the idea of directing. He was very … I was going to say controlling, but that sounds terrible and negative. He had an intense need to be part of the creative process. He wanted more control. Bill knew his limitations as an actor and he knew the limitations of his influence as a television star within Hollywood. I mentioned Bill did several feature films, I think it was 1974 when he did a film called The Apple Dumpling Gang. When he met with the producer, he said, “You’re the first person who offered me a feature film role in six or seven years. I thought this was dead for me.” He definitely recognized his place in Hollywood. He said, “Look, I’m a television star. That’s who I am.”

One day early in the run of The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Bill developed another casual friendship — as I said, he had many — with Steve McQueen. And one day they were on Rodeo Drive — and I’m going to answer your question, but I just want to make a point about this — and this crowd formed. Bill, of course, assumed they were there for Steve McQueen, but they said, “No, Bill Bixby, we want your autograph.” They saw Bill on TV every week, and they only saw Steve McQueen, who was a very enigmatic star, a great star, one of the biggest stars of all time, but a very enigmatic star, who maybe made one movie every two years. They recognized Bill. To your point about directing, he started directing in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, because he wanted more control. He wanted more say in the direction of that series. But throughout the ’70s and ’80s, he became, I hate to say journeyman director, but you’ve seen the TV that he directed throughout the ’80s. There was a point when he directed with the aura of a star — Bill Bixby the star is directing — and there was that aura on the set. But there came a point in the ’80s where he was just another director. One of these guys who directed episodic television for over 15 years. And of course, the end of the Hulk transitioned into what turned out to be the last decade of Bill’s life and career. But from 1983 on, he was primarily a director. It had more to do with staying busy than anything else, because it really didn’t accomplish anything in the grand scheme of things.

Was ‘Blossom’ a good fit for him, do you think? Obviously that’s where he was at the end of his career.

That was a good fit personally, because he developed a second family there. That goes back to my overarching point about Bill and his friendships and relationships. He did Blossom because he felt lonely after the loss of his son and his wife. He found a surrogate family, who he had known for maybe six months to a year. He wanted to be with them, instead of back at the townhouse in Century City just wasting away. I think you wrote an article, I spoke to someone who is developing the … Remember back in the ’80s and early ’90s when they did all these reunion films? There was one intended for My Favorite Martian — you wrote about that, and interviewed the man who was developing that. I spoke to that man. He was a young man at the time, and he put all the pieces together, he got Jack Chertok [the creator of the series] to give up the rights; he got Ray Walston, he got Bill to cooperate. And at the end, he called Bill up and said, “Bill, we’re putting the pieces together, we don’t have a script yet, but we will,” and Bill said, “No, I’m sorry. I can’t. I’ll be dead by then.”

And I spoke to a producer who was actually developing a series with Bill before he died, which would have been a cross between Hart to Hart and Early Edition. Bill said to the producer, “You may hear rumors that I have cancer. It’s not true that I have prostate cancer, it’s hemorrhoids.” He worked right to the end. Do you remember those Elvis specials that he hosted? And the psychic special? By the mid ’80s, Bill was no longer in demand as a leading actor in a series, so towards the late ’80s he was really scrambling. He let it be known in the industry that he would do anything. He started hosting things, and it was embarrassing. He did those Hulk reunion films, because it was something he could control that was viable. But overall, he took any opportunity that was available for him and wasn’t especially picky.

One of the final times we saw Bill was in an interview he gave ‘Entertainment Tonight’ shortly before his death, where he expressed his determination to push forward. What’s your feeling watching him in that interview?

I found it troubling that Bill would feel that he wanted to work. We talked about Blossom as his last job before he died. I don’t think most of us would hope that our lives would end that way. I think most of us would hope that we were with family or perhaps traveling. But directing Blossom didn’t accomplish anything in terms of his legacy. I think what we see there is a man who’s very lonely. I also see, of course, how grotesque his appearance is. When people have cancer, especially women, it brings out their natural features. Bill had a lot of plastic surgery over the years, so his features altered, but it did bring out his natural features in a way and made him look younger, but it was grotesque. One of his friends told me that Bill had hired a bodyguard, not to protect him from fans or the media — although there were some tabloids who were certainly trying to invade his privacy. He wanted them to keep him away from friends, because Bill didn’t want people to see him that way.

He fought very hard and just like all the subjects that Bill tackled in his career, whether he was playing a magician or if he was playing a scientist in David Banner, he researched cancer almost as thoroughly as a medical student would. One night, he was on the phone with Ron Chapman, and he said somewhat with morbid humor — Bill had a very dark sense of humor — “We’re onto the snake venom,” referring to the fact that we’ve really reached the end of the line. He called Ron one night and Ron said he was crying — we talked about emotion. Bill did show emotion; he cried when Christopher died and when he divorced Brenda, he was heartbroken. But he never showed so much emotion when he was dealing with cancer and he saw other patients. He actually collapsed on the set of Blossom and he said, “I was on the set today and fell down. These two girls helped me to my feet and they had tears in their eyes as they did. And it made me cry as well.”

Any final thoughts on Bill and your biography of him?

You asked what surprised me during this process. Bill was 59 when he died and he’d be 85 today. Let’s say Bill was alive today, in some ways I think his legacy would be diminished compared to how his legacy has progressed in death. Death brings this retrospective feeling towards people. I think if Bill was alive today, he would be directing television fairly anonymously, fairly nondescriptly, for as long as he was physically able to. I think Bill would be very surprised by the prestige that television has accrued since he passed away. I’m talking about the indivisible line that has developed between cable television and what I call cinematic television, and feature film making. I think he’d also be disappointed that he was too old to really participate in that. He would have loved that back in the ’60s and ’70s when television really was, to quote Sydney Pollack when he was directing at Universal, “like a sausage factory.” You talk about contradictions: Bill’s a perfectionist working in the severe constraints of episodic television in the ’60s and ’70s. Let me tell you, that is a clash.