Jim McMullan

McMullan grew up in Long Beach, Long Island during the 1950s, where he was always creating something, inventing something, building something. That explains why he went off to college to learn more about art, design and architecture. He studied Industrial Design at New York University and Parsons School of Design for a year before enrolling in Kansas University's School of Architecture. For five years he involved himself in the arts: design, sculpture, art history and even theatre. After a girlfriend coaxed him into playing the lead in a college production of "Desire Under The Elms" by Eugene O'Neill, he spent much of his free time learning the craft of acting. He graduated from the University of Kansas in 1961 with a Bachelor of Architecture degree. On a whim he went to Hollywood in 1961 to visit a friend and, through a chance meeting with playwright William Inge, he was given a screen test for Sam Peckinpah's Ride the High Country (1962) (Peckinpah also directed the screen test). The test was sent to Universal Pictures, which put him under a seven-year contract, the start of a successful 30-year film career. During his four-year stay at Universal he made many TV pilots and starred opposite James Stewart as his son in the classic Shenandoah (1965). After leaving Universal he was given the co-lead for eight weeks opposite Vince Edwards in the series Ben Casey (1961). Jim has had the lead in a few series, such as Chopper One (1974), Beyond Westworld (1980), The Young and the Restless (1973) and most notably had a recurring role on the popular nighttime soap Dallas (1978) as Senator Dowling (a part that lasted for 18 weeks). In 1970, he co-starred with Robert Redford and Gene Hackman in Downhill Racer (1969). For more than 40 years, he appeared in hundreds of TV series, movies and commercials. His many feature film credits include The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981) and Extreme Close-Up (1973). He guest-starred in over 150 TV shows including MacGyver (1985), Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989), The Six Million Dollar Man (1974), The F.B.I. (1965), The Rockford Files (1974), Hart to Hart (1979), The A-Team (1983), Nine to Five (1982), Stowaway to the Moon (1975), Father Knows Best: Home for Christmas (1977), Centennial (1978), and The Taking of Flight 847: The Uli Derickson Story (1988). His career expanded into book writing with his highly acclaimed coffee-table book (co-written with Dick Gautier) "Actors As Artists", a tribute to 77 stars of stage and screen who are gifted visual artists. In France, he played the role of Buffalo Bill from 1998 to 2002 in the "Buffalo Bill Wild West Show", a 1000-seat dinner theater production, just outside of Disneyland Paris. McMullan retired to a small town on the New Jersey shore with his wife, Helene, until the onset of his illness, which claimed his life in California in 2019.