John Ericson

Profile

John Ericson (sometimes Erickson; born Joachim Alexander Ottokar Meibes; September 25, 1926 - May 3, 2020) was a German-American actor and film and television star. He trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, played the lead role in Stalag 17 by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski on Broadway (1951). He went on to make a number of films for MGM in quick succession in the 1950s. His first appearance was in Teresa (1951), directed by Fred Zinnemann, which also launched the film careers of Pier Angeli and Rod Steiger. He then went on to appear in a series of films which included Rhapsody, The Student Prince, Green Fire (all in 1954), and Bad Day at Black Rock (1955). His career continued, mostly on television, for the next thirty years. He appeared in the lead role in "The Peter Bartley Story" of CBS's fantasy drama, The Millionaire. Child actor Johnny Washbrook appeared in the same episode in a flashback segment of Ericson as a boy. He appeared with Dorothy Malone in the January 1, 1956, episode entitled "Mutiny" of CBS's Appointment with Adventure. He guest-starred in 1958 in the NBC western series The Restless Gun, starring John Payne. He also guest-starred in the 1961 ABC crime drama, Target: The Corruptors! In 1965-1966, he co-starred with Anne Francis in the detective series Honey West. He occasionally appeared in such films as Pretty Boy Floyd (1960), 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964), and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). He was married twice and had two children from his first marriage to Milly Coury. Full list of TV and Movie credits for John Ericson.. Born : 23rd-Sep-1926

Movie Credits

It's a Big Country

Comprised of eight unrelated episodes of inconsistent quality, this anthology piece of American propaganda features some of MGM Studios' best directors, screenwriters and actors; it is narrated by Louis Calhern. Stories are framed by the lecture of a university professor. In one tale a Boston resident becomes angry when the census forgets to record her presence. Another sketch chronicles the achievements of African Americans while still another pays tongue-in-cheek tribute to Texas.
Released : 20th-Nov-1951

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Three children evacuated from London during World War II are forced to stay with an eccentric spinster. The children's initial fears disappear when they find out she is in fact a trainee witch.
Released : 7th-Oct-1971

The Bamboo Saucer

A flying saucer hidden in a Red Chinese peasant village is sought by teams from the United States and U.S.S.R. On finding it, they band together to explore the saucer and take a trip into space.
Released : 23rd-Oct-1968

7 Faces of Dr. Lao

An old Chinese man rides into the town of Abalone, Arizona and changes it forever, as the citizens see themselves reflected in the mirror of Lao's mysterious circus of mythical beasts.
Released : 18th-Mar-1964

Bad Day at Black Rock

One-armed war veteran John J. Macreedy steps off a train at the sleepy little town of Black Rock. Once there, he begins to unravel a web of lies, secrecy, and murder.
Released : 13th-Jan-1955

Forty Guns

An authoritarian rancher rules an Arizona county with her private posse of hired guns. When a new Marshall arrives to set things straight, the cattle queen finds herself falling for the avowedly non-violent lawman. Both have itchy-fingered brothers, a female gunman enters the picture, and things go desperately wrong.
Released : 10th-Sep-1957

I Am Semiramis

Semiramis, a powerful and beautiful Assyrian queen, oversees the construction of the luxurious city of Babylon. She falls in love with Kir, a fallen prince turned into a slave who corresponds to her love. But a palace conspiracy will make the two lovers separate and confront each other.
Released : 22nd-Mar-1963

Hog Wild

A Chicago man and his family move to an Idaho pig farm, where he's crippled by an angry sow.
Released : 20th-Jan-1974

The Cruel Tower

The story of a bunch of hard-drinking steeplejacks.
Released : 28th-Oct-1956

The Student Prince

A prince has a romance with a barmaid before he must give up personal happiness for duty.
Released : 15th-Jun-1954

Green Fire

In Colombia, mining engineer Rian Mitchell discovers Carrero, the lost emerald mine of the Conquistadors, but has to contend with notorious local bandit El Moro's gang and with coffee planter Catherine Knowland's love.
Released : 29th-Dec-1954

The House of the Dead

When a philandering husband accidentally finds himself lost during a rainstorm, he’s taken in by an elderly mortician and is forced to learn the ghastly origins of four freshly arrived corpses.
Released : 22nd-Nov-1978

Rhapsody

A rich, young beauty, Louise Durant, follows the man she loves and hopes to marry to Zurich where he studies violin at the conservatory. A piano student at the conservatory falls madly in love with Louise. The violinist loves his music first and Louise second. The pianist loves Louise first and his music second. Louise must ultimately choose which man she wants.
Released : 16th-Apr-1954

Crash!

After a professor is crippled in a car accident, he blames his wife for the ordeal and attempts to have her killed using the same means. Now hospitalized with amnesia, she appears to be protected by a tiny voodoo trinket that she still clutches in her hand, which possesses her car and other objects, causing mayhem throughout the city.
Released : 24th-Dec-1976

Under Ten Flags

"Under Ten Flags" is a WWII movie loosely based on the true story of the German navy commerce raider Atlantis, a converted Auxilliary Cruiser, and her Captain Bernhard Rogge. Atlantis, camouflaged as a merchant ship, cruised the South Seas ( Atlantic, Indian & Pacific) and sank or captured 22 merchant ships from May 1940 through November 22, 1941 when she was sunk by the British Cruiser HMS Devonshire. Rogge was one of the few German officers of flag rank who were not arrested by the Allies after the war ended. This was due to the very proper and ethical way he exercised his command of Atlantis. After the war he advanced to Rear Admiral in the West German Navy and became a high-ranking NATO commander.
Released : 15th-Sep-1960

Heads or Tails

Shanda is charged with the murder of the banker, Burton and to save her from being lynched, the sheriff sends her off to Phoenix. During the trip the two deputies to whom she's been entrusted rape and leave her in the desert, certain that she's dead. The girl is found by Black Talisman, an outlaw, who takes her to his hideout, nurses her back to health and after hearing her story, determines to avenge her and clear her name.
Released : 4th-Jun-1969

The Vengeance of Pancho Villa

During the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa is wounded and left his large treasure in gold back in the city of Colón. He is forced to establish an alliance with General Urbina, leader, and he asks seven of his faithful guerrillas to take back the gold that he has hidden in a farm, near the New Mexico border, and which will allow him to pay for a new army and guns.
Released : 12th-Sep-1967

Teresa

An Italian war bride has problems dealing with her husband's possessive mother.
Released : 5th-Apr-1951

The Return of Jack Slade

To redeem his father's wrongdoings, Ericson joins the law to fight outlaws.
Released : 9th-Oct-1955

The Destructors

Foreign agents are after a substance called "laser rubies" that can power a killer laser beam. Government agents are dispatched to protect the rubies and eliminate the foreign agents.
Released : 3rd-May-1968

The Men Who Made the Movies: Samuel Fuller

Samuel Fuller discusses his career as a filmmaker, illustrated by plenty of clips.
Released : 2nd-Jul-2002

Murder Impossible

A scientist is murdered and his new invention is stolen and held for ransom.
Released : 26th-Mar-1974

Final Mission

When his family are murdered Vietnam War veteran, Vince Deacon, tracks down the man responsible for the murders and to get his revenge.
Released : 25th-Jul-1984

Oregon Passage

A cavalry lieutenant becomes a hated enemy of a Shoshone chief, Black Eagle, when he rescues an Indian maid from a ceremonial camp in this action-packed Western.
Released : 29th-Dec-1957

Hustler Squad

World War II: Allied Command learns that in 60 days three Japanese generals and an admiral party at a bordello on a tiny Philippine island. It's fortified and hard to attack, so a creative, cynical major gets the assignment to figure something else. With the help of Paco, a Filipino guerrilla leader, the major devises a plan to put four women assassins among the prostitutes. He must recruit and train them, convince his general that an unarmed woman can best a man, and get them on the island. The rest is up to them. An imprisoned killer, a nurse with a fatal disease, a chippie on the lamb from the mob, and a Filipina whom the Japanese assaulted are his team. Can they do it?
Released : 7th-May-1976

The Ghosts of Buxley Hall

Ghosts and a young cadet try to save a military academy from being closed.
Released : 21st-Dec-1980

The Money Jungle

When four geologists who form a combine of five industrial companies turn up dead, the race is on to determine whether the culprit is a group of high-powered industrial interests or the government. A trouble-shooter is hired to find a net of deadly intrigue and treachery. The prize: a field to be leased to private industry by the state.
Released : 15th-Dec-1967

Operation Atlantis

An American agent discovers that the Red Chinese have built a secret atomic city from which they will attempt to invade America.
Released : 21st-Oct-1965

Day of the Badman

Judge Jim Scott must contend with the vicious relatives of a murderer he's about to sentence...and his unfaithful fiancee.
Released : 29th-Jan-1958

The Bounty Man

Kinkaid is a rugged, hard-driving bounty hunter, determined to find outlaw Billy Riddle. He tracks Billy, takes him captive, and starts the long trek to justice. However, this journey may lead him to dire consequences... a gang of cut-throats headed by Angus Keough is pursuing them, after the bounty for themselves.
Released : 31st-Oct-1972

Pretty Boy Floyd

Trying to shake his troubled past and start a new honest life, Floyd loses his job because of that past. With nowhere to go but back home in Oklahoma he gets news that his father's been murdered and the local sheriff lets the killer off with a self-defense plea. Bent on revenge, Floyd does what he must which leads him down a dark road littered with robbing banks and loose women. Floyd's final days are anything BUT pretty!
Released : 1st-Jan-1960

Primary Target

A team of Vietnam vets, who now work as mercenaries, faces off against their former wartime comrade turned warlord, who's kidnapped the wife of a US diplomat and is holding her in his base of operations somewhere in the jungles of Laos.
Released : 18th-Jul-1990

Great Lady Has an Interview

A brunette Lana Turner stars in this live song and dance performance of "A Great Lady Has An Interview" to celebrate MGM's 30th anniversary on "The Ed Sullivan Show". The song was previously performed by Judy Garland in the 1945 musical film "Ziegfeld Follies".
Released : 14th-Feb-1954

TV Credits

Hawkins

Frank Pearson - Hawkins is a television series which aired for one season on CBS between 1973 and 1974. The mystery, created by Robert Hamner and David Karp, starred James Stewart as rural-bred lawyer Billy Jim Hawkins, who investigated the cases he was involved in, similarly to Stewart's earlier smash hit movie Anatomy of a Murder. Despite being critically well received and winning a Golden Globe Award, the series was cancelled after one season consisting of seven 90-minute episodes. Stewart requested the cancellation since he believed that the quality of scripts and directors in television could not continuously measure up to the level to which he was accustomed with theatrical films. Seen as part of The New CBS Tuesday Night Movies, it alternated with the TV movie adaptations of Shaft. Contemporary analysts suggested that since the two shows appealed to vastly different audience bases, alternating them only served to confuse fans of both series, giving neither one the time to build up a large viewership.
Released : 13th-Mar-1973

The Fugitive

Lars - Richard Kimble is falsely convicted of his wife's murder and given the death penalty. En route to death row, Kimble's train derails and crashes, allowing him to escape and begin a cross-country search for the real killer, a "one-armed man". At the same time, Dr. Kimble is hounded by the authorities, most notably dogged by Police Lieutenant Philip Gerard.
Released : 17th-Sep-1963

S.W.A.T.

- S.W.A.T. is an American action/crime drama series about the adventures of a Special Weapons And Tactics team operating in an unidentified California city. A spin-off of The Rookies, the series aired on ABC from February 1975 to April 1976. Like The Rookies, S.W.A.T. was produced by Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg.
Released : 24th-Feb-1975

Honey West

Sam Bolt - After her father's death, Honey West takes over his high-tech private-detective firm, assisted by rugged Sam Bolt--and her pet ocelot Bruce.
Released : 17th-Sep-1965

Ironside

Fred - When an assassin's bullet confines him to a wheelchair for life ending his career as Chief of Detectives, Robert T. Ironside becomes a consultant to the police department. Detective Sergeant Ed Brown and policewoman Eve Whitfield join with him to crack varied and fascinating cases. Ex-con Mark Sanger is employed by the chief as home help but eventually becomes a fully fledged member of the team also. Officer Whitfield leaves after 4 years service, and is replaced by Officer Fran Belding.
Released : 28th-Mar-1967

The A-Team

Calvin Cutter - A fictional group of ex-United States Army Special Forces personnel work as soldiers of fortune while on the run from the Army after being branded as war criminals for a "crime they didn't commit."
Released : 23rd-Jan-1983

Lux Video Theatre

Mike - Lux Video Theatre is an American anthology series that was produced from 1950 until 1959. The series presented both comedy and drama in original teleplays, as well as abridged adaptations of films and plays.
Released : 2nd-Oct-1950

The Millionaire

Sgt. Peter Barkley - An anthology series that explored the ways sudden and unexpected wealth changed life for better or for worse. It told the stories of people who were given one million dollars from a benefactor who insisted they never know him, with one exception.
Released : 19th-Jan-1955

Playhouse 90

- Playhouse 90 is an American television anthology series that was telecast on CBS from 1956 to 1960 for a total of 133 episodes. It originated from CBS Television City in Los Angeles, California. Since live anthology drama series of the mid-1950s were usually hour-long shows, the title highlighted the network's intention to present something unusual, a weekly series of hour-and-a-half dramas rather than 60-minute plays. Playhouse 90 began as a pitch by Frank Stanton—the formidable, forward-thinking right-hand man to CBS chairman William S. Paley—during a brainstorming session for program ideas. The project was ultimately developed by Hubbell Robinson, a CBS vice president who received no screen credit on Playhouse 90 but is often described as its creator.
Released : 4th-Oct-1956

Letter to Loretta

Will Hadley - Letter to Loretta is an American anthology drama series telecast on NBC from September 1953 to June 1961 for a total of 165 episodes. The filmed show was hosted by Loretta Young who also played the lead in various episodes. Letter to Loretta was sponsored by Procter & Gamble from 1953 through 1960. The final season's sponsor was Warner-Lambert's Listerine.
Released : 20th-Sep-1953

Appointment with Adventure

- Appointment with Adventure is a half-hour adventure/dramatic anthology television series broadcast live on CBS from 1955-1956. The program has no host. It aired at 10 p.m. EST on the Sunday evening schedule between the better known Alfred Hitchcock Presents and What's My Line? It ran opposite The Loretta Young Show on NBC and Life Begins at Eighty, a panel discussion series hosted by Jack Barry on ABC. The series aired fifty-three episodes, having premiered on April 3, 1955, near the end of the regular 1954-1955 television season. It ran throughout the spring and summer of 1955 and began its fall run on October 2, 1955, concluding new segments on April 1, 1956. In effect, the series ran for a full year without the summer rebroadcast period standard for most programs. Episodes centered upon wars in U.S. history as well as dramatizations from events from many places throughout the world, then and in the past. In the episode which aired on May 1, 1955, Polly Bergen, Dane Clark, and Hugh Reilly starred in "Rendezvous in Paris." Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, fifteen years prior to their television roles as Felix Unger and Oscar Madison, respectively, in ABC's The Odd Couple, appeared with Gena Rowlands, later on NBC's 87th Precinct, in the September 4, 1955, episode entitled "The Pirate's House." Randall also appeared two months earlier in the Appointment with Adventure episode "Caribbean Cruise."
Released : 3rd-Apr-1955

Adventures in Paradise

Jeff Hazen - Adventures in Paradise is an American television series created by James Michener which ran on ABC from 1959 until 1962, starring Gardner McKay as Adam Troy, the captain of the schooner Tiki III, which sailed the South Pacific looking for passengers and adventure. USA Network aired reruns of this series between 1984 and 1988. The plots deal with the romantic and detective stories of Korean War veteran Troy. The supporting cast, varying from season to season, features George Tobias, Guy Stockwell, and Linda Lawson.
Released : 5th-Oct-1959

Cavalcade of America

- Cavalcade of America is an anthology drama series that was sponsored by the DuPont Company, although it occasionally presented a musical, such as an adaptation of Show Boat, and condensed biographies of popular composers. It was initially broadcast on radio from 1935 to 1953, and later on television from 1952 to 1957. Originally on CBS, the series pioneered the use of anthology drama for company audio advertising. Cavalcade of America documented historical events using stories of individual courage, initiative and achievement, often with feel-good dramatizations of the human spirit's triumph against all odds. This was consistent with DuPont's overall conservative philosophy and legacy as an American company dating back to 1802. The company's motto, "Maker of better things for better living through chemistry," was read at the beginning of each program, and the dramas emphasized humanitarian progress, particularly improvements in the lives of women, often through technological innovation.
Released : 1st-Oct-1952

Schlitz Playhouse of Stars

Gunner's Mate Eddie Younger - Schlitz Playhouse of Stars is an anthology series that was telecast from 1951 until 1959 on CBS. Offering both comedies and drama, the series was sponsored by the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company. The title was shortened to Schlitz Playhouse, beginning with the fall 1957 season.
Released : 5th-Oct-1951

The David Niven Show

Twist Thompson - The David Niven Show is an American anthology series that aired from April 7 until July 7, 1959.
Released : 7th-Apr-1959

Star Stage

- The show featured two-act plays. Two-thirds were live, and the rest on film.
Released : 9th-Sep-1955

Climax!

William Herrick - Climax! is an American anthology series that aired on CBS from 1954 to 1958. The series was hosted by William Lundigan and later co-hosted by Mary Costa. It was one of the few CBS programs of that era to be broadcast in color. Many of the episodes were performed and broadcast live.
Released : 7th-Oct-1954

Wagon Train

- The series initially starred veteran movie supporting actor Ward Bond as the wagon master, later replaced upon his death by John McIntire, and Robert Horton as the scout, subsequently replaced by lookalike Robert Fuller a year after Horton had decided to leave the series. The series was inspired by the 1950 film Wagon Master directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr. and Ward Bond, and harkens back to the early widescreen wagon train epic The Big Trail starring John Wayne and featuring Bond in his first major screen appearance playing a supporting role. Horton's buckskin outfit as the scout in the first season of the television series resembles Wayne's, who also played the wagon train's scout in the earlier film.
Released : 18th-Sep-1957

Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre

Will Ruxton - Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre, sometimes simply called Zane Grey Theatre, is an American Western anthology series which ran on CBS from 1956 to 1961.
Released : 5th-Oct-1956

The Philco Television Playhouse

- The Philco Television Playhouse is an American anthology series that was broadcast live on NBC from 1948 to 1955. Produced by Fred Coe, the series was sponsored by Philco. It was one of the most respected dramatic shows of the Golden Age of Television, winning a 1954 Peabody Award and receiving eight Emmy nominations between 1951 and 1956.
Released : 3rd-Oct-1948

Out There

- An anthology series adapting some of the science fiction stories of the time.
Released : 28th-Oct-1951

General Electric Theater

Red - General Electric Theater is an American anthology series hosted by Ronald Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. The series was sponsored by General Electric's Department of Public Relations.
Released : 1st-Feb-1953