Gig Young (born Byron Elsworth Barr; November 4, 1913 – October 19, 1978) was an American actor of stage, film, and television.
Born in St. Cloud, Minnesota and raised in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., he studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, where he was discovered (along with George Reeves) by a Warner Bros. talent scout while performing in a play. After getting signed to the studio he had bit parts in a number of films, in which he was either uncredited or credited as Byron Barr. In 1942, he appeared in The Gay Sisters as a character named "Gig Young", and was so well received that the studio subsequently encouraged him to adapt that as his permanent Stage Name.
Known mainly for supporting roles, in particular for playing the Romantic False Lead in both serious and comedic films, Young won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as a jaded dance-marathon emcee in the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.
Young was married five times, one of his wives being Elizabeth Montgomery of Bewitched fame. On October 19, 1978—three weeks after his fifth marriage, to a 31-year-old German woman named Kim Schmidt—police found the couple dead at home in their Manhattan apartment from gunshot wounds; it was determined that Young had shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself.
Roles with pages on TV Tropes:
- Sergeant York (1941) as Marching Soldier (uncredited)
- The Tanks Are Coming (1941) as Jim Allen note
- Old Acquaintance (1943) as Rud Kendall
- Escape Me Never (1947) as Caryl Dubrok
- The Woman in White (1948) as Walter Hartright
- The Three Musketeers (1948) as Porthos
- Lust for Gold (1949) as Pete Thomas
- Only the Valiant (1951) as Lt. William Holloway
- Arena (1953) as Hob Danvers
- Torch Song (1953) as Cliff Willard
- Rear Window (1954) as Gunnison, Jeff's Editor (voice, uncredited)
- Young at Heart (1955) as Alex Burke
- The Desperate Hours (1955) as Chuck Wright
- Desk Set (1957) as Mike Cutler
- That Touch of Mink (1962) as Roger
- Five Miles to Midnight (1962) as David Barnes
- A Ticklish Affair (1963) as Kay Weedon
- Strange Bedfellows (1965) as Richard Bramwell
- They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) as Rocky
- Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) as Quill
- The Killer Elite (1975) as Lawrence Weyburn
- The Hindenburg (1975) as Edward Douglas
- Sherlock Holmes in New York (1976) as Mortimer McGrew
- Game of Death (1978) as Jim Marshall
- The Twilight Zone (1 episode, 1959) as Martin Sloan
- The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1 episode, 1962) as Duke Marsden
- Kraft Suspense Theatre (1 episode, 1963) as Hugo Myrich
- McCloud (1 episode, 1976) as Jack Hefferman
Tropes in Young's career:
- The Other Marty: He was, famously, the original choice to play The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles. However, Young by this time in his life had a severe case of alcoholism. When filming his first scene, where The Waco Kid is hanging upside down in a jail cell when he meets Sheriff Bart, Young was violently ill. He was immediately fired and Gene Wilder took the part.
- Romantic False Lead: He was rather infamous for getting the role of "the guy who dates the female lead for a while just to lose her to the male lead" a lot. Here are only a few examples:
- In Escape Me Never, he loses Eleanor Parker to Errol Flynn.
- In Only the Valiant, he loses Barbara Payton to Gregory Peck. (Bonus points for "losing" here via getting killed by Apache.)
- In The Girl Who Had Everything, he loses a young Elizabeth Taylor to Fernando Lamas.
- In Torch Song, he loses Joan Crawford to Michael Wilding.
- In Young at Heart, he loses Doris Day to Frank Sinatra.
- In Desk Set, he loses Katharine Hepburn to Spencer Tracy.
- Five Miles to Midnight offers a subversion, in which he courts Sophia Loren only to discover that she is married to Anthony Perkins. It ends up going nowhere as Loren ends up running over the blackmailing Perkins.
