David Carradine
David Carradine was an American actor, director, and producer, whose career included over 200 major and minor roles in film, television and on stage. He was widely known to television audiences as the star of the series Kung Fu, playing Kwai Chang Caine, a peace-loving Shaolin monk traveling through the American Old West.
A member of the Carradine family of actors, he got his break playing Atahuallpa in the 1965 Broadway production of The Royal Hunt of the Sun. He became known for his B movie and martial arts roles, particularly as Big Bill Shelly in Martin Scorsese's Boxcar Bertha, Frankenstein in Death Race 2000, the titular character in Cannonball, Kaz Oshay in Deathsport, Detective Shepherd in Q – The Winged Serpent, and Rawley Wilkes in Lone Wolf McQuade. He portrayed Woody Guthrie in the biopic Bound for Glory, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. He also received Golden Globe nominations for Kung Fu and for the television miniseries North and South, as well as an Emmy Award nomination, also for Kung Fu.
Carradine experienced a resurgence after playing the title character in Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill duology. The role of Bill earned him his fourth Golden Globe nomination and he won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor. On April 1, 1997, Carradine received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Throughout his life, Carradine was [|arrested and prosecuted] for a variety of offenses, which often involved substance abuse. Films that featured Carradine continued to be released after his death. In addition to his acting career, Carradine was a director and musician. Influenced by his Kung Fu role, he studied martial arts, particularly Shaolin quan. In 2014, Carradine was posthumously inducted into the Martial Arts History Museum Hall of Fame.
On June 4, 2009, he was found dead in a hotel room in Bangkok, Thailand hanging from a rope tied around his neck and genitals. The cause of death was determined to be accidental death by auto-erotic asphyxiation.
Early life
Carradine was born John Arthur Carradine Jr., on December 8, 1936, in Hollywood, California, the eldest child of actor John Carradine and his wife Ardanelle Abigail Carradine. He was a half-brother of Bruce, Keith, Christopher, and Robert Carradine, and an uncle of Ever Carradine and Martha Plimpton, most of whom are also actors. Primarily of Irish descent, he was a great-grandson of Methodist evangelical author Beverly Carradine and a grandnephew of artist Will Foster. Called "Jack" by his family, Carradine had a turbulent childhood. His parents divorced and repeatedly remarried; he was born during his mother's second marriage of three, and his father's first of four. At the time of Carradine's parents' marriage, his mother already had a son by her first husband, whom John Carradine adopted. John Carradine had planned to have a large family, but later he discovered his wife had gotten two abortions without his knowledge, and afterward a miscarriage rendered her unable to carry a baby to term.Against this backdrop of marital discord, Carradine almost died by suicide by hanging at the age of five. He said the incident followed his discovery that he and his elder half-brother, Bruce, had different biological fathers. Carradine added, "My father saved me, and then confiscated my comic book collection and burned it—which was scarcely the point." After three years of marriage, Ardenelle filed for divorce from John, but they remained married for five more years. They divorced in 1944, when Carradine was seven. His father left California to avoid court action in the alimony settlement. After the couple had a series of court battles over child custody and alimony, which at one point landed John in jail, Carradine joined his father in New York City; by this time, his father had remarried. On December 25, 1947, Carradine appeared in a live telecast adaptation of A Christmas Carol, with his father in the role of Ebenezer Scrooge. For the next few years, Carradine spent time in boarding schools, foster homes, and reform school. He also often accompanied his father to summer theater throughout the Northeast. Carradine spent time in Massachusetts, and a winter milking cows on a farm in Vermont.
Oakland
Eventually, Carradine returned to California, where he graduated from Oakland High School. He attended Oakland Junior College for a year before transferring to San Francisco State College, where he studied drama and music theory, and wrote music for the drama department's annual revues while juggling menial jobs, a fledgling stage acting career, and his studies. After he dropped out of college, Carradine spent some time with the "beatniks" of San Francisco's North Beach and southern California's Venice. During this time he collected unemployment insurance and sold baby pictures. He was also prosecuted for disturbing the peace.Army service
Despite an attempt to dodge the draft, in 1960, Carradine was inducted into the United States Army, where he drew pictures for training aids. That Christmas he married his high school sweetheart, Donna Lee Becht. While stationed at Fort Eustis, Virginia, he helped establish a theater company that became known as the "entertainment unit". He met fellow inductee Larry Cohen, who later cast him in Q, The Winged Serpent. He also faced court-martial for shoplifting. In 1962, Donna gave birth to their daughter, Calista. Carradine was honorably discharged after two years of active duty.Film and television career
Early television and film appearances
Upon leaving the Army, Carradine became serious about acting. He was advised to change his name to avoid confusion with his famous father. In an interview from 2005 Carradine says his father encouraged him going into acting: "The first thing I ever did outside of school, which was a production of Romeo & Juliet, he came up from Hollywood to San Francisco to see it. And right after he just sort of opened up to me with all this advice. He became very proud of me."In 1963, he made his television debut on an episode of Armstrong Circle Theatre, "Secret Document X256" followed by several other television roles. In 1964 Carradine got a contract with Universal. The studio gave him his feature film debut in Taggart, a Western based on a Louis L'Amour novel.
In May 1964, Carradine joined the cast of the Broadway play The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, replacing Jeremy Brett. When the play ended he was still under contract to Universal, and resumed TV work. He spent a lot of time playing, in his words, "greenhorns in Westerns and villains in thrillers". Carradine guest-starred in The Trials of O'Brien in episodes that were cut together and released theatrically as Too Many Thieves, and Coronet Blue.
''The Royal Hunt of the Sun''
Carradine's first big break came with his second Broadway part in The Royal Hunt of the Sun, a play by Peter Shaffer about the destruction of the Inca civilization by conquistador Francisco Pizarro. Carradine played Atahuallpa opposite Christopher Plummer as Pizarro. The play premiered in October 1965 and was a solid hit, running for 261 performances. Carradine said of this performance, "Many of the important roles that I got later on were because the guy who was going to hire me was in that audience and had his mind blown." For that part, Carradine won a Theatre World Award for Best Debut Performance in 1965. He was also named as one of Theatre World's Promising Personalities from Broadway and Off Broadway.''Shane'' and supporting actor roles
Carradine left the production of Royal Hunt of the Sun in May 1966 to take up an offer to star in the TV series Shane, a 1966 Western based upon a 1949 novel of the same name. Carradine played the title role opposite Jill Ireland. "I know I have some kind of vision that most actors and directors don't have", he said, "so it becomes a duty to exercise that vision. It's a responsibility, a mission." The show only lasted 17 episodes, despite good reviews. Carradine said his career was "rescued" when he was cast in Johnny Belinda. He was in demand as a supporting actor, mostly in Westerns: The Violent Ones, Heaven with a Gun, Young Billy Young for Burt Kennedy, The Good Guys and the Bad Guys with Kennedy, The McMasters, and Macho Callahan. He was unhappy playing villains and told his agent he wanted to stop, which led to his not working in Hollywood for a year. He was cast in a musical, The Ballad of Johnny Pot, but fired two days before opening night on Broadway. In 1972, he co-starred as "Big" Bill Shelly in one of Martin Scorsese's earliest films, Boxcar Bertha, which starred Barbara Hershey, his partner at the time. This was one of several Roger Corman productions in which he appeared. It was also one of a handful of acting collaborations he did with his father. He made his feature directorial debut with the film You and Me, starring alongside Hershey and his brothers Keith and Robert. It was shot in 1972, between making the Kung Fu pilot and the series, but released in 1975.''Kung Fu''
For three seasons, Carradine starred as the half-Chinese/half-white American Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Caine in the ABC hit TV series Kung Fu. The role was nominated for an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award. Along with Bruce Lee films, Kung Fu helped popularize the martial arts and Eastern philosophy in the west. Carradine's character also brought the term "grasshopper" into popular culture.Although the choice of a non-Asian to play the role of Kwai Chang Caine stirred controversy, the show provided steady employment for a number of Asian-American actors. In addition to Keye Luke and Philip Ahn, who held leading roles in the cast as Caine's Shaolin masters, Robert Ito, James Hong, Benson Fong, Richard Loo, and Victor Sen Yung frequently appeared in the series. A second controversy was over whose idea the series had been. Bruce Lee's widow claimed he had come up with the idea of a wandering monk in the Old West, but Ed Spielman, the series' creator, insisted that the concept was his own idea from years before Lee became a star. In an interview from 2005 Carradine disputed Bruce Lee's claim: "That's mythology. I think the way that story started was that they got it mixed up with The Silent Flute. Not sure how that happened." In his authoritative biography Bruce Lee: A Life, Matthew Polly clarifies the issue of Bruce Lee's involvement, concluding that the claim was the result of his not being cast for the leading role, and that he had no participation in the creation of the series.
Kung Fu ended due to several factors. It has been said that Carradine left the show after sustaining injuries that made it impossible for him to continue. While Carradine mentioned it when talking about his work in film, other causes involved were Carradine's burnout, changes in the writing and shooting that altered the show's quality, and changes in the time slot, which led to audience decline. Finally, the main reason was Carradine's decision to quit to pursue a career as a film actor and filmmaker. Also, the bad publicity from a 1974 peyote-related incident involving Carradine affected the ratings; Radames Pera described it as sabotage, which Carradine himself acknowledged had been detrimental to the series. Carradine's annual salary on the show was reportedly $100,000.