Don Galloway R.I.P.

Actor Don Galloway, best known for playing Detective Sergeant Ed Brown on Ironside, passed on January 8 following a stroke. He was 71 years old.

Don Galloway was born on July 27, 1937 in Brooksville, Kentucky. Following high school he served in the United States Army and was stationed in Germany. In 1961 he graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in drama. Following college he moved to New York City. It was in 1962 that he appeared in the off-Broadway play Bring Me a Warm Body, for which he won a Theatre World Award. It was not long afterwards that he would become a regular on the CBS soap opera The Secret Storm.

Galloway swiftly moved to acting in primetime television shows. He guest starred on the series The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Arrest and Trial before being cast as the lead in the short lived NBC sitcom Tom, Dick, and Mary (part of the umbrella title 30 Bristol Court). Following the demise of that show, he guest starred on Wagon Train, Convoy, The Virginian, and Run For Your Life.

Ironside debuted in the fall of 1967, with Don Galloway playing Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside's sidekick, Detective Sergeant Ed Brown. Galloway remained with it the long running series until it went off the air in 1975. After Ironside went off the air, Galloway guested on such shows as Get Christie Love, Marcus Welby M.D., Charlie's Angels, Hart to Hart, Fantasy Island, Hunter, and MacGyver. He was a regular on the series Hizzonner and the daytime soap General Hospital (from 1985 to 1987).

Galloway also appeared in movies. He co-starred with Jimmy Stewart in the 1967 film The Rare Breed. In the late Sixties he appeared in the movies Gunfight in Abilene, Ride to Hangman's Tree, Rough Night in Jericho, Once Upon a Time in the West, and The Vendors. Galloway made no movies in the Seventies, although he would appear in movies from the Eighties into the Nineties such as Satan's Mistress, The Big Chill, Two Moon Junction, Clifford, and The Doom Generation.

I always thought that Don Galloway never quite received his due as an actor. In his career he played everything from the criminal Jamie Bowen in The Rare Breed to Virgil Earp on Wagon Train. His eight season stint on Ironside demonstrated that he was certainly effective as a leading man on a television series. Sadly, he never played lead in a hit series following Ironside. Given his talent, that seems a grave injustice.