Lee Majors

Lee Majors (born Harvey Lee Yeary; April 23, 1939) is an American actor.

He graduated in 1957, and earned a scholarship to Indiana University, where he again competed in sports.

Majors transferred to Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, in 1959.

He played in his first football game the following year, but suffered a severe back injury which left him paralyzed for two weeks and ruined his college athletic career.

Following his injury, he turned his attention to acting and performed in plays at the Pioneer Playhouse in Danville, Kentucky.

Majors graduated from Eastern Kentucky in 1962 with a degree in history and physical education.

He planned to be a football coach.

After college, he received an offer to try out for the St. Louis Cardinals football team.

Instead, he moved to Los Angeles and found work at the Los Angeles Park and Recreation Department as the recreation director for North Hollywood Park.

In Los Angeles, Majors met many actors and industry professionals, including Dick Clayton, who had been James Dean's agent, and Clayton suggested he attend his acting school.

After one year of acting school, Clayton felt that Majors was ready to start his career.

At this time, he picked up the stage name Lee Majors as a tribute to childhood hero Johnny Majors who was a player and future coach for the University of Tennessee.

Majors also studied at Estelle Harman's acting school at MGM.

Majors landed his first, although uncredited, role in Strait-Jacket (1964), in a flashback sequence as Joan Crawford's cheating husband.

He portrayed the characters of Heath Barkley on the American television Western series The Big Valley (1965–1969), Colonel Steve Austin on the American television science-fiction action series The Six Million Dollar Man (1973–1978), and Colt Seavers on the American television action series The Fall Guy (1981–1986).

Majors was born in Wyandotte, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.

His parents, Carl and Alice Yeary, were both killed in separate accidents.

(His father died in a work accident five months prior to his birth, and his mother was killed in a car accident when he was almost seventeen months old.) At the age of two, Majors was adopted by his uncle and aunt, Harvey and Mildred Yeary, and he moved with them to Middlesboro, Kentucky.

He participated in track and football at Middlesboro High School.

After appearing in a 1965 episode of Gunsmoke, he starred later that year as Howard White in an episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, "The Monkey's Paw – A Retelling", based on the short story by W. W. Jacobs.

Majors got his big break when he was chosen out of over 400 young actors, including Burt Reynolds, for the co-starring role of Heath Barkley in a new ABC/ Four Star western series, The Big Valley, which starred Barbara Stanwyck.

Also starring on the show was another newcomer, Linda Evans, who played Heath's younger sister, Audra.

Richard Long and Peter Breck, (who himself had previously starred in an earlier Four Star western series, "Black Saddle") played his brothers Jarrod and Nick, respectively.

One of Heath's frequently used expressions during the series was "Boy howdy!"

Big Valley was an immediate hit.

During the series, Majors co-starred in the 1968 Charlton Heston film Will Penny, for which he received an "Introducing" credit, and landed the lead role in The Ballad of Andy Crocker (1969), a made-for-television film which was first broadcast by ABC.

The film was one of the first films to deal with the subject matter of Vietnam veterans "coming home".

That same year, he was offered the chance to star in Midnight Cowboy (1969), but The Big Valley was renewed for another season and he was forced to decline the role (which later went to Jon Voight).

When The Big Valley was cancelled in 1969, he signed a long-term contract with Universal Studios.

In 1970, Majors appeared in William Wyler's final film The Liberation of L.B. Jones, and joined the cast of The Virginian for its final season when the show was restructured as "The Men From Shiloh" featuring four alternating leads.

Majors played new ranch hand Roy Tate.

Majors was called a "blond Elvis Presley" because of his resemblance to Elvis during this period of his career.

In 1971, he landed the role of Arthur Hill's partner, Jess Brandon, on Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, which garnered critical acclaim during its three seasons on ABC.

Majors's co-starring role on Owen Marshall led him to a starring role as United States Air Force Colonel Steve Austin, an ex-astronaut with bionic implants in The Six Million Dollar Man, a 1973 television film broadcast on ABC.

In 1974, the network decided to turn it into a weekly series.

The series became an international success, being screened in over 70 countries, turning Majors into a pop icon.

Majors also made his directorial debut in 1975, on an episode called "One of Our Running Backs Is Missing" which co-starred professional football players such as Larry Csonka and Dick Butkus.

In 1977, with The Six Million Dollar Man still a hit series, Majors tried to renegotiate his contract with Universal Television.

The studio in turn filed a lawsuit to force him to report to work due to stipulations within his existing contract that had not yet expired.

It was rumored that Majors was holding out for more money, but his manager denied this: according to him, Majors was fighting to have his own production company, Fawcett Majors Productions, brought on as an independent producer in association with Universal in order to make the company viable.