Don Marshall, who played the first officer Dan Erickson on the 1960s ABC science-fiction series Land of the Giants, has died. He was 80.
Marshall, who later starred in the blaxploitation film Terminal Island (1973) and appeared in such films as The Thing With Two Heads (1972) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974), died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, actress and friend BarBara Luna announced on her Facebook page.
Land of the Giants, produced by Irwin Allen, revolved around the crew and passengers of the spaceship Spindrift, which on the way to London crashed on a planet whose humanoid inhabitants were hostile and unbelievably huge.
Set in the year 1983, the show aired for two seasons, from 1968-70, and Marshall was the rare African-American to be featured in such a prominent role on television at the time.
In 1967, on the 16th episode of NBC’s Star Trek, “The Galileo Seven,” Marshall played Lieutenant Boma, a member of the crew on the shuttlecraft Galileo. And on the 1968-70 ABC series Julia, Marshall recurred as Diahann Carroll’s love interest, Ted.
A native of San Diego, Marshall studied acting at Los Angeles City College, where he also was a pole vaulter on the track team. He played an aspiring doctor in his onscreen debut, the Cliff Robertson starrer The Interns (1962), and then appeared on such TV shows as The Lieutenant (created by Star Trek‘s Gene Roddenberry), Rawhide, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Daktari.
Marshall also showed up on such TV shows as Bewitched, Good Times, Police Story, The Incredible Hulk, Little House on the Prairie, Mission: Impossible and The Bionic Woman.
