Bob Purvey

Good looks, television commercials, magazine ads and notoriety as a "world class surfer" led to theatrical film and television roles. The transition from professional surfer to professional actor came quickly. Purvey became an international model appearing in magazine advertisements and TV commercials for major brands such as Hallmark, BMW motorcycles, and many more. Albeit, he was challenged by acting and appeared in film and TV roles, developing an acting career over the 1970's. His first major performance was in the title role as "The Rebel" in a 1970 episode of Mission: Impossible. Most notable is Purvey's performance in the principal role as "Flip," in the 1977 Emmy nominated CBS pilot, Winners: I Can. He was a series regular as "Rhett Saxton" in the soap opera Lovers and Friends (NBC, 1977), a semi-regular in General Hospital (ABC, 1985-89 and 2008) and had featured roles in A-Team, Rich Man - Poor Man and Young and the Restless, among others. National television commercial appearances (on-camera), include the one-and-only Atari Pac Man, Hallmark Card's "Coming Home" (CLIO award) and the 1st Chevrolet Celebrity commercial, among others. Robert Anthony "Bob" Purvey was born in Cairo, Egypt, at 4:17 AM on 14th of May, 1948. His mother was Greek mother and his father was British. The Purvey's primary language then was French and secondary languages were English, Greek and Arabic. "On weekends, we'd visit my grandparents at their country house outside of Alexandria. Driving back and forth, my father would have me read the English roadside billboards, out loud and he would teach me to enunciate the words properly." At age three, Bob's father discovered Bob was physically coordinated. He placed a tennis racket and tennis ball in Bob's hands and started Bob hitting the ball against the back-wall. Bob managed to keep the ball in mid-air, countless of times, demonstrating that he was physically coordinated naturally. They played tennis at the internationally famous Gezira Sporting Club, where King Farouk had built a new tennis arena for the Jack Kramer professional world tour. Kramer and Bob's father played each other regularly. On April 29, 1954, the family was forced out of Egypt. The communist revolutionary party, led by Abdul Nasser and his military regime had deposed King Farouk, and ousted all British subjects from the country, with only two suitcases each. The once affluent family of four, moved to London, England, where Purvey and his elder sister, Joan, attended boarding school for the next year. On March 18, 1955, the Purvey family arrived in New York and moved into the Manhattan Hotel for the next six months. While trying to sort things out, the family moved to Jamaica, Queens, where seven year-old Purvey entered grade school at PS #50. "I joined the neighborhood gang, wore a Jelly-Roll, white t-shirt with rolled up sleeves, jeans, a Garrison belt and biker boots. I was like Marlon Brando in disguise, with a zip-gun tucked in my pants. I was smoking cigarettes and pursuing girls by age ten." In the spring of 1961, the family moved to Westwood Village, in West Los Angeles, California, where Purvey was enrolled in Emerson Junior High School. "I was first taken on a tour of the campus the day I got there, and when we got to the gym class, I was told I had to "Strip for gym." I didn't know what it meant exactly, but it sounded fun." When summer came, his sister took her 14-year-old brother to the Santa Monica Pier where he was introduced to surfing. He caught the first wave he tried to catch and stood up, riding all the way onto the sand, where he stepped off the board to the applause from his sister and her friends. His father gave Bob his first surfboard as a Christmas present. By the winter of 1962, Purvey entered the Santa Monica Mid-Winter Championships, his first surfing contest. He then got the attention of surfing icon Dewey Weber when he won his preliminary heat and beat a top competitor on the prestigious Dewey Weber Competition Team. Soon after, Dewey invited Purvey to join his Competition Team It was the height of surfing's cultural movement in 1964, when Purvey, at age 16, started gaining attention as he climbed the ranks of the United States Surfing Association, in the Junior Men's division. Purvey was getting free surfboards as a member of the famous "Red Jackets," AKA the Dewey Weber Competition Team. He was passionate about surfing, but unfortunately there was no significant money in the sport. So, he had to subsidize contest surfing by working part-time at Duke's 76 Union gas station in Westwood Village, as a gas station attendant. On one sunny Sunday, on a day off from work, and when the waves were small, he decided to give his VW van camper an oil change at the gas station. It so happened that Don Lewis, a production photographer for Urie Productions in Hollywood, stopped by and saw the handsome young lad. He approached and asked Purvey if he wanted to be in a TV commercial for Chrysler. "Is there any money in it?" Purvey asked. And, so started an alternative career in film and TV. Lewis introduce Purvey to Mary Ellen White, a theatrical agent who had Purvey taking voice lessons with Dr. Bella Cummings Kennedy. By 1965, Purvey had gained notoriety in surfing magazines and wished to become a professional. He wanted his own "Bob Purvey" signature model, as was the trend, but Dewey declined Purvey's request. Purvey decided to move on and joined the Ernie Tanaka Surfboard's competition team. Tanaka agreed to make Purvey's signature model, a noserider style design, which Purvey had been working on perfecting while being mentored by Dewey as a contest surfer/surfboard designer. Tanaka's marketing campaign was under-financed, and despite Purvey's growing fame, it failed to produce any royalties. Six months later, an offer came from top manufacturer, Con Surfboards of Santa Monica. It had an ambitious marketing plan, and a written contract. On November 11th, 1966, at age eighteen, and as the principal designer of "The (Con) Ugly" surfboard model, Bob Purvey won the noseriding division of the The Morey-Pope Professional Invitational Championships, the second professional contest in the sport's history. By the end of 1967, The Ugly became the hottest selling surfboard in the world, according to Surfing Magazine, and was advertised in all the surfing magazines. Although The Ugly was exclusively associated with Purvey and his surfing skills, in all advertisements, for the following two years, Con withheld Purvey's royalties, and a controversy loomed over their arrangement because Purvey's name was not on the surfboard. During that two-year period Purvey continued to compete as a world-class champion, promoting what everyone considered to be his brand. In 1967, he was introduced to film making and featured as himself, champion surfer in a surf movie called "Follow Me", a full-length surfing odyssey that took place in many coastal regions around the world. It was produced by Robert E. Peterson Productions and released through Cinerama in 1968. It was made with a skeleton crew and, while he appeared though out the film, Purvey worked in a variety of capacities, from camera operator on his surfboard to location hunting In 1979, after honing his skills as an actor, he returned to competing as a surfer and won his first contest. In 1980, Purvey became an entrepreneur, co-operating the Graphlite surf shop at Topanga Beach in Malibu. In 1986, he innovated and produced the Malibu Classic Challenge, which demonstrated all the surfing skills in the sport. In 1992, he became a Malibu environmentalist and award-winning community access producer of television documentaries, educating the community and general public about the polluted waters at world famous Malibu Surfrider Beach, his home surf spot. It became his and he delivered educational programs demonstrating what could be done to solve the many pollution problems that had a negative impact on his home surfing spot. While focused on cleaning up the environment, he performed in small roles on the soap's General Hospital and The Bold and the Beautiful. He was the narrator in the award winning documentary, In Search of the California Condor, with which he won the 2009 International Wildlife Film Festival Merit Award for his Co-editing skills. In 2010, he formed the nonprofit EcoMalibu @ecomalibu.org with the mission to educate the general public about restoring the historical wetland environment in the heart of Malibu. In 2012, the Malibu Lagoon restoration was completed and has now matured, with wildlife returning that haven't been seen in decades. He's promoting an innovative professional surf contest to be produced by EcoMalibu and plans can be seen at www.MalibuNoseRiding.com. Also, The Ugly surfboard is now his signature model and his noserider surfboard line is selling online at www.TheUglySurfboard.com. He's just introduced an innovative noserider board-short with stretch-zone performance technology. Orders are being taken online at www.TheUglyClothingCompany.com BTW, he's seeking representation to help get him into his next film or TV project.