Skip Homeier


George Vincent Homeier, known professionally as Skip Homeier, was an American actor who started his career at the age of eleven and became a child star.

Career

Child actor

Homeier was born in Chicago, Illinois on October 5, 1930. He began to act for radio shows at the age of six as Skippy Homeier. At the age of 11, he worked on the radio show Portia Faces Life as well as making "dramatic commercial announcements" on The O'Neills and Against the Storm. In 1942, he joined the casts of Wheatena Playhouse and We, the Abbotts. From 1943 until 1944, he played the role of Emil in the Broadway play and film Tomorrow, the World!. Cast as a child indoctrinated into Nazism who is brought to the United States from Germany following the death of his parents, Homeier was praised for his performance. He played the troubled youngster in the film adaptation of Tomorrow, the World! and received good reviews playing opposite Fredric March and Betty Field as his American uncle and aunt.

Adult roles

Homeier changed his first name from Skippy to Skip when he turned eighteen. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles.
Although Homeier worked frequently throughout his childhood and adolescence, playing wayward youths with no chance of redemption, he did not become a major star; but he did make a transition from child actor to adult, especially in a range of roles as delinquent youths, common in Hollywood films of the 1950s.
He also developed a talent for playing strong character roles in war films, such as Halls of Montezuma, Sam Fuller's Fixed Bayonets! and Beachhead.
in the General Electric Theater presentation of "The Hunted", 1954
In 1954, he guest-starred in an episode of the NBC legal drama Justice, based on cases of the Legal Aid Society of New York. He was cast later in an episode of Steve McQueen's ', a CBS Western series. Homeier played a man sought for a crime of which he is innocent, but who has no faith in the legal system's ability to provide justice. Fleeing from McQueen's bounty hunter character Josh Randall, Homeier's character's foot slips and he accidentally falls to his death from a cliff.
He appeared in a 1955 episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with co-star Joanne Woodward entitled "Momentum". Homeier appeared as Kading in an episode of the NBC western Jefferson Drum, starring Jeff Richards. In 1959, he appeared as a drover named Lucky in Rawhide, Incident of the Blue Fire. In 1960, Skip appeared on an episode of The Rifleman: The Spoiler as Brud Evans. Then, from 1960 to 1961, he starred in the title role in Dan Raven, a short-lived NBC crime drama set on Sunset Strip of West Hollywood, California, with a number of celebrities playing themselves in guest roles. The series only lasted for thirteen episodes. In the summer of 1961, he appeared in an episode of The Asphalt Jungle, and later that same year, he performed as a replacement drover and temporary "ramrod" in an episode of Rawhide.
Homeier also made two guest appearances on Perry Mason, both times as the defendant. In 1961, he played Dr. Edley in "The Case of the Pathetic Patient", and in 1965, he played the police sergeant Dave Wolfe in "The Case of the Silent Six". In 1964, he guest-starred in The Addams Family episode "Halloween with the Addams Family" with Don Rickles. Also in 1964, he portrayed Dr. Roy Clinton in The Outer Limits episode "Expanding Human". In a very busy year, he also appeared in the Combat! episode "The Impostor". He also appeared in the Combat! episode "Night Patrol" as Lt. Billy Joe Cranston.
Homeier was cast as Doc Holliday in the 1964 episode, "The Quiet and the Fury", on the syndicated anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. The episode focuses on Holliday as a card player. Grace Lee Whitney played Kate in the episode. In a 1965 Death Valley Days episode, "Fighting Sky Pilot", hosted by Ronald Reagan, Homeier played a pastor, Ben Darniell, in Carson City, Nevada. In the storyline, the minister Darniell attempts to rescue a saloon girl, Claire Vernon, from her oppressive employer.
Homeier was cast in the feature film The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with Don Knotts; and he continued to be frequently cast on television as a guest star, often as a villain, including in all four of Irwin Allen's science-fiction series in the mid-to-late 1960s. He guest-starred as well on ' in two episodes: as the Nazi-like character Melakon in "Patterns of Force |Patterns of Force", and as Dr. Rota Sevrin in "The Way to Eden". One of his last roles was a one-liner in the television film The Wild Wild West Revisited as a senior Secret Service official. He retired from acting aged 50.

Death

Homeier died on June 25, 2017 at the age of 86 from spinal myelopathy at his home in Indian Wells, California. He is survived by his wife, Della, and his sons Peter and Michael from his first marriage to Nancy Van Noorden Field.

Selected filmography