Lang Jeffries (Canadian-American film | |||
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Born | June 7, 1930 Ontario, Canada | ||
Died | February 12, 1987 (aged 56) Huntington Beach, Orange County California, USA | ||
Spouse | (1) Rhonda Fleming (married 1960 to 1961, divorced)
(2) Gail Harris (married 1966, later divorced) |
Lang Jeffries (June 7, 1930 – February 12, 1987) was a Canadian-American actor of television and film who was formerly married to actress Rhonda Fleming (1923-2020).
Jeffries was born in Ontario, Canada. He was living in Michigan at the time he procured his Social Security number. He served in the United States Army during the Korean War and was among only three survivors of his 177-man unit that landed in Inchon, South Korea, in the fall of 1950, in a mass landing conducted by General Douglas MacArthur.[1]
From 1958 to 1960, Jeffries procured his first and most successful acting role, that of Skip Johnson, in all seventy-four episodes of the syndicated adventure television series, Rescue 8, with co-star Jim Davis (1909-1981) as Wes Cameron. The program offered accounts of difficult rescues completed by the Los Angeles County Fire Department.[2] Davis was later cast as the indomitable family patriarch Jock Ewing of CBS's 1978 Dallas television series.
In 1960, Jeffries and John McIntire, later of the NBC western series, Wagon Train, guest-starred in the episode "The Most Dangerous Gentleman" in another western, the short-lived NBC series, Overland Trail, starring William Bendix and Doug McClure.[1]
On October 9, 1961, only three months before their divorce, Jeffries and wife Rhonda Fleming (born 1923) appeared as themselves, married for sixteen months, with Helen O'Connell in the interview program, Here's Hollywood. Jeffries, seven years Fleming's junior, was the third of her six husbands.[3]
Jeffries starred as Vibio in the foreign film, The Revolt of the Slaves, with Rhonda Fleming cast as Fabiola. In the film, Fabiola gives the order that Vibio be whipped on the back. In a 1962 film, Alone Against Rome (also known as Vengeance of the Gladiator, Jeffries, in the role of Brenno, was again whipped on the back.[3]
In 1962, after the breakup of his marriage to Rhonda Fleming, Jeffries guest-starred in the episode "Elegy of a Hero" of the first-run syndicated adventure series Ripcord starring Larry Pennell, with Ken Curtis, who was later cast as Festus Haggen on CBS' Gunsmoke..[1] From 1964 to 1971, Jeffries appeared in nearly twenty films in France, Spain, the former West Germany, Italy, and Romania. He played science-fiction hero Perry Rhodan in Mission Stardust (1967). His last three American film appearances were in Mean Mother (1974), as Arthur Wheeler in The Junkman (1982), and as Lieutenant Arthur in Deadline Auto Theft (1983).[1]
In 1966, while living in Rome, Jeffries married Gail Harris, the mother of John Paul Getty, III (1956-2011). Beginning in the mid-1970s, Jeffries managed an art gallery in Huntington Beach in Orange County, California, owned with his third wife, Mary. He died in Huntington Beach at the age of fifty-six.