Hugh O'Brian (born Hugh Charles Krampe) was born in Rochester, NY on April 19, 1925 and died on September 5, 2016 at 91 years old.
Hugh was born in Rochester but his family moved to Lancaster, PA when he was 5 after his father became executive of the Armstrong Cork Company, where they would live for around four years before moving to Chicago, Illinois after his father got a promotion offer for the Chicago branch (later, in 1963 Hugh O'Brian was awarded the key to the city by Lancaster Mayor George Coe.) Chicago is where the family would remain. They lived in Winnetka, Illinois.
Hugh attended the University of Cincinnati for one semester before dropping out to enlist in the Marine Corps during WWII at the age of 17, making him the youngest Marine drill instructor ever (still today). After WWII ended he planned to go back to college to become a lawyer, and was accepted to Yale University! However, he began dating an aspiring actress and was with her in Hollywood. She was in a play and he would attend her rehearsals. One day the lead actor failed to show up so the director of the play asked him to read lines. He was so good that he landed the role and the other actor was let go. The play went on to receive amazing reviews and an agent reached out to him offering him a contract! He decided to change his name from Hugh Krampe to Hugh O’Brian for the entertainment industry (his mother’s family name was O’Brien but when someone misspelled it as O’Brian he decided to keep it that way).
He worked consistently in mostly B films but his big break came in 1955 when he landed the role of lawman Wyatt Earp on ABC, making him a TV star. The series became a hit and spearheaded the “adult Western” tv genre along with Gunsmoke and Cheyenne, which debuted the same year as Wyatt. Wyatt Earp ran from 1955-1961 and was in the Top 10 ratings all of its six seasons.
While starring on his own show he did make guest appearances on other television shows and that continued into the 1960s. He also starred in numerous films throughout the 1960s. In 1971 he starred in a Pilot for a series that would become the series “Search”, which lasted only one season (1972-1973). In 1976 he starred in the John Wayne flick “The Shootist” and then In 1977 he was one of the featured actors for the 2 hour premiere of “Fantasy Island”. In the early 90s he reprised his role as Wyatt Earp in 3 different projects, including an indie flick.
In June of 2006 he married his girlfriend of 18 years (who was 27 years younger than him). She was his first and only marriage, as he never cared to get married and was more of a playboy throughout his life than a family man (despite having one son after he knocked up a photographer) but she made an honest man out of him. She was a teacher and they spent their honeymoon studying at Oxford University. Hugh was a strong lover and believer of the importance of education and believed "an active mind is as important as an active body.".
There have been 3 people since his death who have come forward claiming he was their biological father ( not counting the one son he did have). He certainly was a beautiful man who got around. Women loved him.
In 1958 Hugh started the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership Foundation (HOBY), a nonprofit youth leadership-development program for high-school scholars. HOBY sponsors 10,000 high school sophomores annually through its over 70 leadership programs in all 50 states and 20 countries.
