'Christmas Story's' Darren McGavin Was Bionic TV Boss Before Richard Anderson on '$6 Million Man'

Darren McGavin with Lee Majors in the pilot film for 'The Six Million Dollar Man'Photo byecrater.com

Many TV shows over the decades have had the same or similar characters played by two different actors. Arguably the best-remembered example of this is when Dick York was played by Dick Sargent as Darrin on Bewitched (ABC, 1964-62).

Another example, from that same show in fact, is when Marion Lorne's bumbling witch Aunt Clara was replaced by Alice Ghostley's bumbling witch housekeeper Esmeralda.

A similar transference occurred a few years later on the same network with the weekly sci-fi/adventure series, The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-1979). Here's the story.

A Closer Look

The Six Million Dollar Man was one of the most popular TV shows of the 1970s, superhero-based or otherwise. Today, it remains popular in reruns and with an award-winning Blu-ray release.

Back in 1973, Lee Majors, hot off of TV's Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law, and The Big Valley before that, played Col. Steve Austin on The Six Million Dollar Man.

As the Million Dollar story goes, following a horrific test-pilot plane accident, Austin's body is shattered. However, his life is saved by a special government-funded surgery that transforms him into the world's first bionic man. The price: six million dollars and Austin's regular life.

In-debted to the American government, Austin becomes a super-spy who fights off evil at every turn and saves the world on at least a semi-weekly basis.

The show began as a 1973 TV-movie, which then became a monthly series, followed by a weekly show.

Who's The Boss?

Every week, Steve Austin was given assignments by his supervising government official Oscar Goldman, played by Richard Anderson.

Once 'The Six Million Dollar Man' became a weekly series, Lee Majors' Steve Austin (left) answered to Richard Anderson's Oscar Goldman.Photo byPinterest.com

But Anderson's Goldman was not Austin's first boss. That position belonged to Oliver Spencer, played by Darren McGavin in the original 1973 Six Million Dollar Man TV-movie-pilot.

A popular actor from the early days of TV, McGavin became best known for another small screen role. in the early 1970s, he played the other-worldly investigative reporter, Carl Kolchak, first in a series of TV-movies, and later in the weekly show, Kolchak: The Night Stalker.

One decade after that, McGavin found further fame, this time on the big screen as the befuddled father in the classic holiday feature film, A Christmas Story (1983). The actor then made a periodic return engagement to weekly TV when he played Candice Bergen's flustered dad on Murphy Brown (CBS, 1988-1998).

Into the Bionic Mix

Meanwhile, three different actors interpreted the same role in The Six Million Dollar Man: Dr. Rudy Wells was played by Martin Balsam in the show's original 90-minute pilot movie, and Alan Oppenheimer and Martin E. Brooks shared the role in The Six Million Dollar Man.

When Lindsay Wagner's also-cybernetic superhuman Jaime Sommers (true love to Lee Majors' Steve Austin) was later spun off into a weekly super series of her own with The Bionic Woman, Brooks was the sole actor who played Wells.