Michael Gray, 1951 – 2026

Michael Gray, a 1970s TV teen idol, died on Oct. 16. H was 75. The Chicago native had small roles in Marcus Welby, M.D., Room 222, The Flying Nun, The Brady Bunch, and the TV-movie Bobby Jo and the Big Apple Good Time Band (gawd what a 1972 title!), before being cast in the series The Little People. From 1974-76, he starred as Billy Batson—the mortal version of Captain Marvel—in Shazam! (a role he poked fun at in several episodes of Archer, decades later). Gray pretty much left acting by the 1980s, running an L.A. flower shop with his wife. “They wanted me to be the next David Cassidy,” Gray once said. “I was on the front cover of Tiger Beat often, and it worked. Back then, when the show was running and all the fan magazine coverage was going on, I couldn’t leave my house. It got pretty ugly sometimes.”