Inside His INCREDIBLE LIFE
THROUGH PUBLIC SUCCESSES AND PRIVATE LOSSES, THE TV FAVORITE LEFT A POWERFUL LEGACY
Brandon Cruz and Bill Bixby played a loving father and son on the classic sitcom The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, but it wasn’t really a stretch for either. “My family life was berserk, and he offered me stability — I had a room and a bike at his place in Malibu,” Brandon, who was 5 when he was cast on the show in 1969, tells Closer. “He was a bachelor, and I showed him what it was like to have a kid — it was mutually beneficial.”
As the 25th anniversary of Bill’s tragic death at 59 in 1993 approaches, friends and co-stars are remembering him as a consummate TV pro; in addition to Eddie’s Father, he also headlined the hits My Favorite Martian and The Incredible Hulk. Offscreen, he suffered painful hardships but never stopped moving forward. “He was always full of joy,” Ted Wass, whom Bill directed in the ’90s sitcom Blossom, tells Closer. “You would never know what he was going through because he lost himself in his work.”
Bill met wife Brenda Benet when she gueststarred on Eddie’s Father. Their marriage lasted nine years and gave him a son of his own, Christopher. But shortly after her 1980 divorce from Bill, Brenda took Christopher on a ski trip, where he died of cardiac arrest at the age of 6. “Chris’ death just knocked him out,” Mariette Hartley, who was co-starring with Bill on Hulk at the time, tells Closer. “I used to walk past his Winnebago and hear him sobbing.” His grief only intensified when Brenda committed suicide a year later. “It was a devastating time for him,” says Mariette, but Bill found a way to cope. “Work was a catalyst by which I was able to maintain a sense of balance,” he said. “You go on, you endure.”
A NEW DIRECTION
Bill took control of his life and career by cutting back on acting and focusing more on his work behind the camera. “When I’m directing, I’m the only one who knows what the end result will be,” he said. “And I enjoy taking responsibility.”
He assumed the director’s chair for the second season of the hit sitcom Blossom in 1992 and quickly endeared himself to the cast and crew. “Bill was inventive, creative, endlessly playful and inspiring,” Mayim Bialik, who played the titular teen, tells Closer. Adds Ted, who co-starred as her dad, “Bill was a father figure to the younger cast members. He was always willing to share what he knew.”
Sadly, Bill had already been diagnosed with prostate cancer when he took the Blossom job, but he didn’t let his illness slow him down as he helmed 30 episodes of the series. “He had a sense that time was short for him, so he wanted to spend as much time as he could doing what he enjoyed most, which was working,” says Ted.
By the fall of 1993, Bill was too sick to stand, but he continued doing his job on Blossom, giving directions from a bed on the set. “He had his passion up to the last possible moment, and it was infectious,” says Ted. Shares Mayim, “He worked with us until the end of his life — literally — and I will always remember his smile.”
So will everyone who knew Bill during his too-short life. “He impacted my life on so many levels — he was more than a family member,” says Brandon, who gave his son the middle name Bixby when he was born a year after Bill’s death. “I’m living the way Bill taught me — being openminded, caring and willing to take a risk.” — Bruce Fretts, with reporting by Ilyssa Panitz
“If you go through life and you haven’t made any mistakes, it means you haven’t taken any chances.” — Bill