Darryl Hickman

Darryl Gerard Hickman (July 28, 1931 – May 22, 2024) was an American actor, screenwriter, television executive, and acting coach. He started his career as a child actor in the Golden Age of Hollywood and appeared in numerous television serials as an adult, including several episodes of the CBS series The Nanny. He appeared in films such as The Grapes of Wrath and Leave Her to Heaven (1945).

He was the older brother of Dwayne Hickman, an actor, television executive, producer and director.

Career Child actor in the 1930s and 1940s In the mid-1930s, Darryl was discovered by a dance-school director, and subsequently became a student there. The following year, Hollywood studio Paramount signed a contract with the child actor. His first film role was as Ronald Colman's son in The Prisoner of Zenda in 1937. He attended Paramount's school in California and his classmates included Gene Nelson and Jackie Cooper.

In preparation for the 1939 Bing Crosby movie The Star Maker, Paramount casting agents, led by Leroy Prinz, interviewed more than a thousand children. Hickman won one of the parts in the film. Pleased with Hickman's performance, Crosby notified his older brother and talent agent Everett Crosby of the young actor. After this, he went on to appear in multiple motion pictures throughout the 1930s and 1940s in a wide array of genres. A busy performer, he sometimes worked on different films simultaneously.

In 1939, Hickman was cast in 20th Century Fox's film adaption of John Steinbeck's best-selling novel from 1939, The Grapes of Wrath, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford. He portrayed Winfield Joad, the youngest member of a family trying to cope with the hardships of the Great Depression. The film was a critical and commercial success, with Ford winning an Academy Award for Best Director, while actress Jane Darwell won for Best Supporting Actress. In 1941, Hickman played a reform-school juvenile delinquent in Men of Boys Town, "almost running away [with the movie] right under [co-star] Mickey Rooney's nose", said one review. Another notable role during this time included the wartime melodrama The Human Comedy, where he played a mentally slow child. Hickman made a featured appearance as Frank in the 1942 Our Gang comedy short Going to Press. In 1944, he again played the bad-boy antagonist, cast opposite Jimmy Lydon's goody two-shoes character in the film Henry Aldrich, Boy Scout. In this period, he also acted alongside Gene Tierney and Cornel Wilde in the 1945 film Leave Her to Heaven. Being the sole survivor among the cast, he provided extra commentary in the DVD release of the movie. His experience of working with Tierney was mixed; he considered her to have been aloof and not to have given her best performance, although it led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

The year after the release of Leave Her to Heaven, Hickman was lauded by a newspaper as "one of Hollywood's top juveniles". Hickman later became critical of child acting, lamenting how the profession for young actors deprives them of a real childhood. He opted to get therapy for several years to come to terms with his past.

Adult career Hickman graduated from Cathedral High School in Los Angeles in 1948 (his brother Dwayne graduated from the same school in 1952). Finding it hard to adjust to adulthood after being in the limelight for most of his childhood, he retired from show business to enter a monastery in 1951 as a Passionist monk. He returned to Hollywood around one month later. He continued acting, but with fewer roles than he had at the peak of his career. He appeared in Season 3, Episode 45 (1952) of The Lone Ranger as "The Midnight Rider" (Bob Jessup).

One of his most notable roles during this time was as Al in the 1956 film Tea and Sympathy. He also began acting for the first time in the then-new entertainment medium of television. The switch did not always turn-out successfully, for many shows were cancelled for various reasons in the early years of television. Hickman's ongoing efforts to reinvigorate his acting career were interrupted for two years while he served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956.

In 1959 and 1960, Hickman appeared on younger brother Dwayne Hickman's CBS sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, playing Dobie's older brother Davey in three episodes: "The Right Triangle" (1959), "Deck the Halls" (1959), and "Where There's a Will" (1960). Also in 1959 he starred twice in the TV Western Gunsmoke; as "Andy Hill" in the episode "The Choice" (S4E34) and as "Danny" in the episode "Target" (S5E1). In 1961, Hickman starred in a short-lived TV series The Americans. In 1976, after a 17-year hiatus from movies, Hickman had a minor role as Bill Herron in Network.

Television executive and acting coach Hickman became a television executive, producer, and occasional screenwriter, mainly working in New York City. In the early 1970s, Hickman was associate producer of the long-running soap opera Love of Life.

Hickman's book about acting techniques, The Unconscious Actor: Out of Control, in Full Command, was published in April 2007. In it, he explains how his approach to acting evolved through his interactions with the various actors and directors with whom he worked over the years. One of his most important influences came from working with Spencer Tracy and George Cukor in the 1942 movie Keeper of the Flame. In another book written by James Curtis and published in 2011, Spencer Tracy: A Biography, Hickman's admiration for Tracy and Cukor is again documented. He praises the two men's patience in that biography, as well as their ability to give due attention to inexperienced actors such as himself. Earlier, in a 2002 interview, Hickman stated that the current generation of young Hollywood actors was talented, but lacked the proper coaching and ambition.

Personal life and death Hickman was born in Hollywood, California, on July 28, 1931, to Milton and Katherine (née Ostertag) Hickman. His father sold insurance and his mother was a housewife. His maternal grandfather, Louis Henry Ostertag, was a U.S. Navy seaman on Commodore George Dewey's flagship, the cruiser USS Olympia (C-6), and present at the Battle of Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, for which he was awarded the Dewey Medal by Act of Congress. Per the 1940 Census, Darryl and his family were living with his grandparents at 950 N. Kenmore Ave. in Los Angeles.

Hickman married actress Pamela Lincoln, with whom he had acted in the movie The Tingler, on November 28, 1959. The couple, who had two sons, divorced in 1982. Their younger son, Justin, died by suicide at the age of 19 in 1985.

Hickman died on May 22, 2024, at the age of 92.

Selected filmography

Features Year Title Role Notes 1937 The Prisoner of Zenda Bit Role Uncredited 1938 If I Were King Child Uncredited 1939 The Star Maker "Boots" 1940 Emergency Squad Bob Uncredited The Grapes of Wrath Winfield Joad The Farmer's Daughter Billy BinghamUncredited The Way of All Flesh Victor As A boy Prairie Law Homesteader's Son Uncredited Untamed Mickey Moriarty Mystery Sea Raider Benny Uncredited Young People Tommy 1941 Sign of the Wolf Billy Freeman Men of Boys Town "Flip" Mob Town Butch "Shrimp" Malone Glamour Boy Billy Doran 1942 Young America David Engstrom Joe Smith, American Johnny Smith Jackass Mail Tommy Gargan Northwest Rangers 'Blackie' As A Boy 1943 Keeper of the Flame Jeb Rickards The Human Comedy Lionel Assignment in Brittany Etienne 1944 Henry Aldrich, Boy Scout Peter Kent Song of Russia Peter Bulganov And Now Tomorrow Joe Uncredited Meet Me in St. Louis Johnny Tevis Uncredited 1945 Salty O'Rourke "Sneezer" Captain Eddie Eddie Rickenbacker As A Boy Rhapsody in Blue Ira Gershwin As A Boy Kiss and Tell Raymond Pringle Leave Her to Heaven Danny Harland 1946 Two Years Before the Mast Sam Hooper The Strange Love of Martha Ivers Young Sam Masterson Boys' Ranch Hank 1947 The Devil on Wheels Micky Clark Black Gold Schoolboy Dangerous Years Leo Emerson 1948 The Sainted Sisters Jud Tewilliger Fighting Father Dunne Matt Davis Big Town Scandal "Skinny" Peters 1949 Alias Nick Beal Larry Price The Set-Up Shanley Any Number Can Play Paul Enley Kyng A Kiss for Corliss Dexter Franklin 1950 The Happy Years "Tough" McCarty 1951 Lightning Strikes Twice "String" Criminal Lawyer Bill Webber Uncredited Submarine Command Jack Wheelwright 1953 Destination Gobi Wilbur "Coney" Cohen Island in the Sky Swanson Sea of Lost Ships Senior Cadet Pete Bennett 1954 Southwest Passage Jeb Prisoner of War Merton Tollivar Ricochet Romance Dave King 1955 Many Rivers to Cross Miles Henderson Uncredited 1956 Tea and Sympathy Al 1957 The Iron Sheriff Benjamin "Benjie" Galt The Persuader Toby Bonham 1959 The Tingler David Morris Time Element Ensign Janoski TV series 1976 Network Bill Herron 1981 Looker Dr. Jim Belfield Sharky's Machine Detective Smiley 1982 The Tragedy of King Lear Earl of Kent 1986 GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords Marbles / Hornet Voice

Television 1997 Season 4, Episode 12: Danny's Dead and Who's Got the Will? Season 4, Episode 26: Fran's Gotta Have It 1998 Season 5, Episode 22: The Wedding 1999 Season 6, Episode 22: The Finale: Part 2

Short films Coffins on Wheels (1941) – Billy Phillips Heart Burn (1942) – Nephew Going to Press (1942) – Frank Boogie Woogie (1945) – Junior Stumplefinger