Hollywood actor who starred in notable comic strip adaptation dies at 82
0 Comments Published by Avi Green on Friday, December 19, 2025 at 2:01 AM.
The Hollywood Reporter announced the actor Gil Gerard, who was once notable for playing Buck Rogers in the 1979-81 TV show, which was adapted from the 1929 comic strip by Phillip Francis Nowlan, has passed away at 82 years of age:
As for the part about West's Batman series, did it ever occur to Gerard that they were basically going by the example set by the comics during the Silver Age, when the Joker was toned down to more of a prankish nuisance than the lethal crimelord he'd begun as? A time when tongue-in-cheek comedy was the resort of comics writers as a result of the CCA and moral panic caused by Fredric Wertham? I don't know if Gerard ever took a look at that for consideration, but I do know that if he originally balked at the Rogers role because the show could be comedic, that was ill-advised. Mainly because of how wokeness badly damaged the comedy genre in the past decade, and no telling if it'll recover now. We could use some more comedy if it helps to encourage and inspire people for positive reasons, and certainly if it's in good taste.
It's sad Gerard's gone, but his role as Buck Rogers is ultimately appreciated, and someday, if there's writers and producers who have a sense of tastefulness, maybe they'll consider adapting Nowlan's comic strip again, though perhaps this time, animation could make a better venue for an adaptation to be developed. And should it ever be adapted again, any producers taking up the task would do well not to go a PC route, and not disappoint fans of the original source material by extension.
Update: Radio Times also notes that Janet Gerard's shared a final posthumous message Gil asked her to publish.
Gil Gerard, the actor from Arkansas best known for his turn as the wisecracking hero of the 1979-81 NBC series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, died Tuesday. He was 82.According to Anime News Network, Gerard also did voice acting for some Transformers cartoons. I saw the BR series myself when I was younger, and in its 1st season it did have some promise. Plus, IIRC, the late Gary Coleman of Diff'rent Strokes fame (1978-86) was a guest in one episode. I think the reason the Buck Rogers series failed in its 2nd season was because of changes made where Gerard and Gray were traveling through space far more often than spending time on Earth, and the way it was done unfortunately did not appeal to the audience. It likely also didn't help that filming was delayed by the Writers Guild strike of late 1980.
Gerard lived in Georgia and died after a battle with “a rare and viciously aggressive form of cancer,” his wife, Janet, announced in a Facebook post.
In 1977 films, Gerard had played Lee Grant‘s romantic interest in Airport ’77 and had starred as a moonshiner in the Appalachia-set comedy Hooch when he was approached to star in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, co-produced by Glen A. Larson at Universal Television.
Based on the popular comic strip character most famously featured in a 1939 movie serial that starred champion Olympic swimmer Buster Crabbe, the light-hearted sci-fi series kicked off with a 1979 movie developed in the wake of the huge success of Star Wars.
At first, the dashing Gerard wasn’t interested in the part. “I saw what it did to Adam West‘s career with Batman, and this was another cartoon character. I didn’t want to do this campy stuff,” he said in a 2018 interview.
However, he finally was persuaded to sign on, and the Buck Rogers movie proved to be a hit, finishing among the top 25 domestic grossers that year. The film was then retooled to serve as the show’s two-hour opening episode.
Buck Rogers lasted two seasons and a total of 32 episodes through April 1981 before being canceled. [...]
As Capt. William Anthony “Buck” Rogers, a NASA/U.S. Air Force pilot who is accidentally frozen in his spacecraft in 1987 and then discovered in the year 2491 after a nuclear war, Gerard starred opposite Erin Gray as Col. Wilma Deering and Felix Silla as the robot Twiki (voiced by Mel Blanc).
“I thought the character had a sense of reality about him,” he said in 2017. “The sense of humor I liked very much and his humanity, I liked. I thought it was kind of cool. He wasn’t a stiff kind of a guy. He was a guy who could solve problems on his feet, and he wasn’t a superhero.”
As for the part about West's Batman series, did it ever occur to Gerard that they were basically going by the example set by the comics during the Silver Age, when the Joker was toned down to more of a prankish nuisance than the lethal crimelord he'd begun as? A time when tongue-in-cheek comedy was the resort of comics writers as a result of the CCA and moral panic caused by Fredric Wertham? I don't know if Gerard ever took a look at that for consideration, but I do know that if he originally balked at the Rogers role because the show could be comedic, that was ill-advised. Mainly because of how wokeness badly damaged the comedy genre in the past decade, and no telling if it'll recover now. We could use some more comedy if it helps to encourage and inspire people for positive reasons, and certainly if it's in good taste.
It's sad Gerard's gone, but his role as Buck Rogers is ultimately appreciated, and someday, if there's writers and producers who have a sense of tastefulness, maybe they'll consider adapting Nowlan's comic strip again, though perhaps this time, animation could make a better venue for an adaptation to be developed. And should it ever be adapted again, any producers taking up the task would do well not to go a PC route, and not disappoint fans of the original source material by extension.
Update: Radio Times also notes that Janet Gerard's shared a final posthumous message Gil asked her to publish.
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