Dana Elcar

Dana Elcar
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Portrays:	John Steadman
Date of Birth:	October 10,1927
Date of Death:	June 6, 2005
Age at Death:	77
Nationality:	USA
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IMDb profile

Dana Elcar (born Ibson Dana Elcar; October 10, 1927 – June 6, 2005) was an American actor who portrayed John Steadman, a water-hoarding rancher, in the Galactica 1980 episode "Space Croppers". Over a career spanning five decades, he accumulated more than 150 television and film credits. He is best known for playing Pete Thornton, director of operations at the Phoenix Foundation, in the ABC adventure series MacGyver (1985–1992).

Career

Stage

The son of Danish immigrants, Elcar was born in Ferndale, Michigan. At the University of Michigan, where he played linebacker on the football team, he founded the Ann Arbor Theater. He joined the U.S. Navy in 1948 and in the early 1950s moved to New York City, driving a taxi while studying drama with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

His early New York stage career included the original American productions of Harold Pinter's The Dumb Waiter and The Caretaker, Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. He also appeared in Richard III opposite George C. Scott and in several Phoenix Theatre Company productions, including Androcles and the Lion.

Elcar made his Broadway debut in 1955 in Roald Dahl's The Honeys, opposite Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. His subsequent Broadway credits included Good as Gold (1957), Semi-Detached (1960), and A Murderer Among Us (1964). In 1964 he served as understudy to Alec Guinness in Dylan and to Jason Robards in Eugene O'Neill's Hughie.

After moving to Los Angeles in 1968, Elcar co-founded the L.A. Actors' Theater in the mid-1970s. In 1985, with fellow actor William Lucking, he co-founded the Santa Paula Theater Center in Santa Paula, California, serving as its artistic director for six years. He also directed episodes of Baa Baa Black Sheep, The Rockford Files, and MacGyver.

Television

Elcar made his television debut in 1954 in the daytime drama "A Time to Live". From 1966 to 1967, he played Sheriff George Patterson on the ABC gothic soap opera Dark Shadows. His 1970s television work included recurring roles in Baretta (as Inspector Shiller) and Baa Baa Black Sheep (as Colonel Thomas A. Lard), as well as guest appearances on Gunsmoke, Hawaii Five-O, Mannix, Kung Fu, and Falcon Crest.

In 1980, Elcar guest starred as John Steadman in the Galactica 1980 episode "Space Croppers", which aired on April 27, 1980.

From 1985 to 1992, Elcar co-starred in all seven seasons of MacGyver as Pete Thornton, Richard Dean Anderson's boss and closest friend. After four seasons, he told producers he was losing his sight to glaucoma; rather than recasting the role, they wrote the condition into Pete Thornton's storyline. Anderson later recalled of the experience:

At a time when I had very little business being called an actor, he made things so easy for me. It was a learning experience that was very warm and loving for all seven years.

After MacGyver ended in 1992, Elcar continued acting despite having lost his sight entirely, subsequently playing blind characters in episodes of Law & Order and ER. His final screen credit was a 2002 episode of ER.

Film

Elcar's film debut came in Sidney Lumet's Fail-Safe (1964). He went on to appear in more than 40 films, among them The Learning Tree (1969), The Sting (1973) as FBI Agent Polk, 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) as Soviet scientist Dimitri Moisevitch, and All of Me (1984).

Personal life

Elcar settled in Santa Paula, California in the mid-1980s. He died on June 6, 2005, at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, California, of complications from pneumonia, aged 77. He was survived by his companion, Thelma M. Garcia, three daughters, and a son.

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