This episode was originally released 04/2019.
Jeff Chandler was born Ira Grossel in Brooklyn, NY on 12/15/1918. Raised by his mother, he went to Erasmus High School. There he acted in school plays with classmate Susan Hayward.
He later took courses at the Feagin School of Dramatic Art in NY and was briefly in radio before getting a job with a troupe on Long Island as an actor and stage manager.
He worked for various stock companies over the next two years, including a performance in The Trojan Horse opposite Gordon and Sheila MacRae, to whom he became good friends.
Chandler served in the Pacific and finished World War II as a Lieutenant. After, he moved to Los Angeles. Although he struggled to find work in film, by May of 1946 he was appearing on radio.
The next autumn he was cast as the lead in The New Adventures of Michael Shayne, a syndicated program written by Larry Marcus and produced by Bill Rousseau and Don W. Sharpe. It was the first program sold through the Broadcaster’s Guild. The series was ready for release in March, 1948.
It led Jeff Chandler to the radio role of a lifetime opposite Eve Arden. Our Miss Brooks premiered on July 19th, 1948. Jeff Chandler co-starred as Philip Boynton, the bashful biology teacher and chief object of Mrs. Brooks’ affection.
Gale Gordon played the Madison High School principal, Osgood Conklin, while Jane Morgan played landlady Mrs. Margaret Davis. Richard Crenna played student Walter Denton, and the program also featured Gloria McMillan, Mary Jane Croft, Gerald Mohr, and Maurice Marsac. Chandler & Arden had noticeable on-air chemistry.
The next year, Chandler was cast as Chad Remington in Frontier Town, produced in syndication by Bruce Ells Productions. Chad Remington was a young lawyer who wanted to use the justice system to help clean up his hometown, Dos Rios, TX. In this first episode he comes to Dos Rios to find out who murdered his father. Wade Crosby portrayed Remington’s comic relief sidekick Cherokee O’Bannon in the vein of W.C. Fields. Virginia Gregg played girlfriend, Libby. Frontier Town first ran locally on San Francisco’s KQW in the spring of 1949. KQW became KCBS that April, and the series continued until August 8th.
In 1949 Chandler was cast as Israeli leader “Kurta” in the film, Sword in the Desert. He impressed studio executives so much with his work that shortly into filming, Universal signed him to a contract. The next year, 20th Century Fox borrowed Chandler for the role of the Apache Chief “Cochise” in Broken Arrow. He starred alongside James Stewart.
The performance earned him an Academy Award nomination and established him as an A-list star. Radio suddenly was less of a possibility due to time constraints, but if Chandler was leaving radio, it was against his will. In May of 1951 he told the Chicago Tribune that he didn’t find film acting as gratifying as radio acting. He wanted to eventually branch off into writing and directing.” When Our Miss Brooks moved into TV in 1952, Chandler wasn’t allowed to make the transition with the rest of the cast.
Meanwhile, due to his status as an A-list star, Frontier Town was revived by CBS for a coast-to-coast network run. Chandler reprised his role. Thanks to transcription, he was able to record several episodes in a sitting.
Frontier Town returned to the air on 5/6/1952, but by then his commitments to film made it impossible to work in radio. Between 1951 and 1953, he was featured in fourteen films.
Chandler left the program after the 2/27/1953 episode, “Thunder Over Texas.” Reed Hadley took over the lead and Frontier Town went off the air for good, on 8/14/1953. Jeff Chandler would spend the rest of the decade making films.
On 4/15/1961, he was playing a pickup game of basketball with some U.S. Army Special Forces soldiers while working on Merrill's Marauders in the Philippines. During the game, Chandler severely injured his back. He was given injections to deaden the pain so that he could finish the film.
On May 13th, he entered a Culver City hospital to have surgery for a spinal disc herniation. An artery was accidentally damaged during the procedure and Chandler hemorrhaged. Four days later, in a seven-and-a-half-hour emergency operation, he was given 55 pints of blood. A third operation followed, on May 27th, where he received an additional 20 pints. An infection followed, complicated by pneumonia he caught at the hospital in his weakened state.
Jeff Chandler never recovered. He died on 6/17/ 1961, just two months after the basketball game.
His friends were shocked and horrified. More than 1,500 people attended his funeral. Pallbearers included Tony Curtis and Gerald Mohr. Jeff Chandler was forty-two years old.
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