page_title: George Kennedy
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: George Kennedy / Career
caption_attribution_description: Photo of George Kennedy as Bumper Morgan from the television program The Blue Knight.
context_page_description: George Harris Kennedy Jr. was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 film and television productions. He played "Dragline" opposite Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the role and being nominated for the corresponding Golden Globe. He received a second Golden Globe nomination for portraying Joe Patroni in Airport.
  Among the notable films he had a significant role in are Charade, Strait-Jacket, McHale's Navy, Shenandoah, The Sons of Katie Elder, The Flight of the Phoenix, The Dirty Dozen, The Boston Strangler, Guns of the Magnificent Seven, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, Airport 1975, Earthquake and The Eiger Sanction.
  Kennedy was the only actor to appear in all four films in the Airport series, having reprised the role of Joe Patroni three times. He also played Police Captain Ed Hocken in the Naked Gun series of comedy films, and corrupt oil tycoon Carter McKay on the original Dallas television series.
context_section_description: His film career began in 1961 in The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. He appeared in several Hollywood movies, including as a sadistic jail guard in the Kirk Douglas modern western Lonely Are the Brave (1962), a ruthless criminal in the Cary Grant suspense film Charade (1963), and in a Joan Crawford thriller, Strait-Jacket (1964).
  Kennedy was busy in 1965. He appeared with Gregory Peck in the mystery Mirage, with a large cast led by James Stewart in the plane-crash adventure The Flight of the Phoenix, with John Wayne in the war film In Harm's Way and with Wayne and Dean Martin in the western The Sons of Katie Elder.
  He played the character "Blodgett" in a 1966 episode "Return to Lawrence" of the ABC Western series The Legend of Jesse James.
  Then came the role for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in Cool Hand Luke (1967), that of "Dragline," a chain-gang convict who at first resents the new prisoner in camp played by Paul Newman, then comes to idolize the rebellious Luke.
  Kennedy followed with films such as The Dirty Dozen, Bandolero!, and The Boston Strangler. In 1970, he appeared in the Academy Award-winning disaster film Airport, in which he played one of its main characters, airline troubleshooter Joe Patroni. He reprised this role in Airport 1975, Airport '77 and The Concorde ... Airport '79, the only cast member to appear in each film of the series.
  The Airport franchise helped inspire the Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker satire Airplane!, in which the filmmakers hoped to cast Kennedy as the bumbling plane dispatcher. The role went to Lloyd Bridges, because Kennedy "couldn't kill off his Airport cash-cow", Jerry Zucker said in 2010.
  Kennedy co-starred with Clint Eastwood in two films, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot and The Eiger Sanction, and with ensemble casts in the disaster film Earthquake and the Agatha Christie mystery Death on the Nile.
  He also starred in two television series, Sarge, which aired from 1971-72 on NBC, and The Blue Knight, a CBS series that ran for 24 episodes from 1975-76.
  Kennedy starred in two Japanese productions, Junya Satō's Proof of the Man in 1977 and Kinji Fukasaku's Virus in 1980. Both films were produced by Haruki Kadokawa and featured extensive international casts and shooting locations. Although Proof of the Man was only released theatrically in Japan and Virus saw a financially unsuccessful truncated cut in the U.S., Kennedy was highly enthusiastic towards his involvement.
  In 1984, Kennedy starred opposite Bo Derek in the box-office bomb Bolero. He made other minor films including Savage Dawn, The Delta Force and Creepshow 2, before playing a role in the comedy film The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! in 1988, playing Captain Ed Hocken opposite Leslie Nielsen's comical cop Frank Drebin. There were two sequels in which Kennedy co-starred.
  In 1990, Kennedy appeared in the Korean film Mayumi directed by Shin Sang-ok who was best known for having been kidnapped with actress and wife Choi Eun-hee by North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il. Mayumi was Shin's attempt at re-entering the South Korean film industry and was the country's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 63rd Academy Awards, but it was not accepted as a nominee. Despite featuring Kennedy, it saw no wide release outside of South Korea and was ultimately a domestic box office failure.
  On television, Kennedy starred as Carter McKay in the CBS prime time serial Dallas (1978–1991), appearing from 1988 to 1991. From the mid- to late-1990s, he promoted "Breathasure" tablets in radio and television commercials. Around this time, he reprised his role as McKay in the television films Dallas: J.R. Returns and Dallas: War of the Ewings. In the late 1970s, Kennedy also appeared as a celebrity guest on the television game show Match Game.
  In 1998, he voiced Brick Bazooka for the film Small Soldiers. He then made several independent films, before making a 2003 comeback to television in the soap opera The Young and the Restless, playing the character Albert Miller, the biological father to legendary char
caption: Kennedy as Bumper Morgan in The Blue Knight, 1976
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