Shazam star Michael Gray, who played teenage hero Billy Batson on the live-action Saturday-morning series in the 1970s, died October 16 in Palm Desert, California. He was 75. His family said he died of natural causes.
Gray played Billy for only three seasons. For a generation that grew up in front of the TV on weekend mornings, that was enough to make him unforgettable.
A Chicago kid who wanted to read the news
Gray was born in Chicago on September 2, 1951, and his family moved to Miami when he was still small. His first ambition was broadcasting, not acting. He dropped the newscaster plan early, and in a 1976 interview he explained why with a joke: he “mumbled too much.”
Acting came next, and it came young. He drew attention playing Burt Reynolds’ brother in the ABC TV movie Run, Simon, Run. In 1972 he became a regular on The Little People, the series later renamed The Brian Keith Show, playing student doctor Ronnie Collins opposite Brian Keith and Shelley Fabares.
A year later he turned up on The Brady Bunch. In the episode “Marcia Gets Creamed,” his character was one of Marcia Brady’s boyfriends, caught at an ice cream parlor with another girl. Maureen McCormick’s Marcia settled the score with a face full of whipped cream.
Becoming Billy Batson on Shazam!
The part that defined him arrived in 1974. Shazam! brought the comic-book character to live-action television, with Billy Batson traveling the country helping people and turning into Captain Marvel when trouble hit. Jackson Bostwick played the hero first. John Davey later took over the cape.
Gray appeared in 28 episodes. He admitted years later that he knew nothing about the character or the story when he was hired, so he had to learn fast. He remembered the work as both fun and draining, and he was proud the show was among the first live-action series on Saturday mornings.
Not every early experiment went smoothly. While the crew tested a flash device for Billy’s transformation, Gray said, the smoke cleared and he found himself slightly singed. The production dropped that effect in a hurry.
Life as a 1970s teen idol
Shazam! made Gray a fixture of the fan magazines. His face ran again and again in Tiger Beat and 16, and he later said the heartthrob image was partly engineered by the people around him. They wanted him to become “the next David Cassidy,” he said.
The plan worked, possibly too well. Gray recalled that while the show was on the air and the magazine coverage peaked, he couldn’t leave his house, and things sometimes got ugly.
Off camera, his hopes were modest. In 1976 he told The Monroe Dispatch that apart from acting, his goal was to meet a nice girl, settle down and raise a big family.
He eventually stepped away from Hollywood. Gray married, and he and his wife ran a flower shop in West Hollywood. He also worked in men’s fashion and in children’s educational theater.
Fans who never forgot
For about 30 years, Shazam! sat largely forgotten on the shelf. Strangers kept asking Gray when it would come out on DVD, and when it finally did, he said he was overwhelmed.
Those encounters changed how he saw the role. People told him the show had helped them through childhood or shaped the adults they became. Gray put it down to the series’ strong moral values, and he admitted he never grasped at the time how much it would mean to the kids watching.
That bond explains why his death is landing hard with a certain age group. Decades before superhero films took over the box office, Shazam! was one of the few places a child could watch a comic-book hero in live action every week.
Gray returned to acting in occasional, often playful roles. He voiced “TV’s Michael Gray” on several episodes of FX’s Archer between 2015 and 2019 and appeared in multiple entries of the Surge of Power franchise. In 2023, almost 50 years after his debut as Billy, he made a cameo in Shazam! Fury of the Gods, in a scene tied to Zachary Levi’s modern take on the hero.
Tributes from the Saturday-morning crowd
Wesley Eure, the Land of the Lost star whose show aired opposite Shazam! in the same era, remembered running into Gray at industry parties, at the Tiger Beat offices and, more recently, at autograph shows. Eure called him a genuine teen idol and said he suspected Gray had set the record for magazine covers.
John Davey, Gray’s Captain Marvel, said Gray made him feel welcome from his first day on set. He described a kind, funny man who loved acting and, later in life, loved chatting with fans at Comic Cons. “I don’t think he ever stopped smiling,” Davey said.
Gray is survived by his wife of more than 30 years, two stepchildren and his son-in-law.
