David Harold Meyer was born on March 27, 1931, in Naponee, Nebraska. While still a teenager, his family settled in Hollywood where he attended Fairfax High School and began to develop an interest in acting. His film debut was a bit part in “It’s A Pleasure” (1945), and he signed a contract with Twentieth Century Fox at the age of 18. The studio soon dropped him however, because of his big and prominent ears, and he moved on to Universal where he (and his ears) signed another contract in the early 1950s. For this studio, he worked as a supporting player in thirty-two films, including “Francis Goes To West Point,” “Bonzo Goes To College” (both 1952), “Cult of The Cobra” and “All That Heaven Allows” (both 1955), just to name a few. His big break came in 1957 as the star of the television series, “Richard Diamond, Private Detective.” A year after the series ended in 1960, he resumed his movie career.
His biggest success, without question, was his lead role in the television series, “The Fugitive” (1963), in which he portrayed Dr. Richard Kimble, a hunted man on the run for a murder he didn’t commit. Based loosely on the Dr. Sam Sheppard case, the series ran for four years. Throughout the 1970s, he worked without stopping, appearing in nearly twenty made for TV movies, including another very popular series, “Harry O” (1974).
He was married twice and had no children, dying of a heart attack in Malibu, California, on February 13, 1980. at the age of 49. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of fame a block away from the Chinese Theater. When it was placed there, it was directly in front of David’s favorite ice cream shop as a child.
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