What Happened to Claude Akins of B. J. and the Bear, When and How Did He Die?
Claude Akins disappeared from the scenes in the early 1990s, after playing Detective Lucky Douglas in Twisted Fear, released in 1994. Claude played the role before sickness and ultimately, death came knocking.
In his over four-decade career, Akins featured in more than 150 works which cut across theater, film, television, and voice. Claude started his career in the late 1940s with Broadway, making his stage debut in The Rose Tattoo. He later joined Hollywood in the early 1950s, making his first (uncredited) movie appearance in From Here to Eternity (1953). The next year, Akins played his first credited film role in Bitter Creek.
Following this, Akins featured in several successful movies such as The Caine Mutiny (1954), Gunsmoke (1955), The Defiant Ones (1958), Inherit the Wind (1960), How The West Was Won (1962), and The Killers (1964). From 1974 to 1976, he co-starred with Frank Converse in Movin’ On. The highly received TV series centers on Claude and Frank who respectively played gypsy truck drivers Sony Pruitt and Will Chandler.
Other notable theater movies, films and television films/series Claude featured in are Bonanza (1960), Merrill’s Marauders (1962), The Night Stalker (1972), The Norliss Tapes (1973), Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), Cannon (1973), Police Story (1973-1978), Mannix (1974), and The Streets of San Francisco (1974), among numerous others.
Akins’ last years acting roles include Benjamin Sloan in “An Eye for an Eye” episode of In the Heat of the Night (1991); President Theodore Roosevelt in the television film, The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991), Speck Parks in Falling from Grace (1992), and Pastor William Clay in Seasons of the Heart (1993).
