JAN MERLIN BIOGRAPHY

Jan Wasylewski was born April 3, 1925, in New York City. His parents Peter and Theresa took care of a Russian Orthodox Church. He left Stuyvesant High School to enter the U.S. Navy in 1942 and served as a destroyer torpedoman until 1946. "I got my education through growing up at war, reading classics at my battle station," he says.

During the war, he spent on-shore time in Europe, Africa, Japan and the Philippines. He had been fascinated by Africa since first hearing a relative's tales of his adventures there, at the tender age of 5, and resolved to go back after the war. His subsequent visits provided the raw material for the incredibly realistic recreation of 19th Century Africa found in his novel GUNBEARER.

Although as a child, Jan witnessed many live performances put on by the immigrant congregation of his parents' church, he was not himself bitten by the stage bug until he saw in occupied Japan how important the craft of acting remained in Japanese culture, despite the destruction brought on by the war.

In April of 1946 he arrived back in New York, legally changed his name to Jan Merlin, and enrolled in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. Other students there were Eli Wallach (who later married another classmate, Anne Jackson) Leslie Neilson, John Weaver, and Richard Boone.

He worked in summer theaters until landing a part in the Broadway hit MISTER ROBERTS, in 1949, appearing with Henry Fonda and David Wayne. After two years he left the still-running show to take the role of Roger Manning in TOM CORBETT SPACE CADET, which had its first broadcast on CBS on October 2, 1950, moving to ABC January 1, 1951.

The last ABC broadcast of SPACE CADET, with Kelloggs as sponsor, was September 26, 1952. In that broadcast, Roger Manning is dying of a disease picked up in a distant colony, but is saved by Dr. Dale's medical skill in time to join Captain Strong, Tom and Astro for a mysterious mission in distant space, "further than we've ever gone before," as Captain Strong proclaims in his last line. It was indeed a long trip! For a few weeks short of a whole year, the program was off the air.

As Jan says, "I had actually quit [SPACE CADET] at that time... [after the ABC run] and went off to safari in Central Africa with my first wife, Pat... and then after spending the summer in the USA touring in plays in summer theatres, I was talked into returning to the series for that Fall." [The series had been picked up by DuMont, for a twice-a-month run on Saturdays, from August 29, 1953 to May 22, 1954.] Jan says, "I was to quit once again, this time permanently, in 1954, so that I could do THE ROPE, a play by Patrick Hamilton, off Broadway, was then scouted for a film, and went on to Hollywood." THE ROPE was later filmed by Alfred Hitchcock under the title ROPE, unfortunately with a different cast.

Jan received critical raves for his performance as a homicidal and sexually ambiguous college student in THE ROPE, and was called to Hollywood to play the villain in a Tony Curtis gangster film, SIX BRIDGES TO CROSS. His youthful looks allowed Jan to play the bad guy, both in early sequences as a 16-year-old kid, and in later sequences as an adult. [The Tony Curtis character as a teenager was played by Sal Mineo.]

[SPACE CADET was revived, after being off the air for seven months, and now permanently without Jan and Cadet Roger Manning, for one short final season on NBC, Saturdays from December 11, 1954 to June 25, 1955.]

Taking up residence in Hollywood, Jan worked constantly in films and television. He also was once a member, along with Richard Boone(!), of the Nina Fonaroff Dance Company, was a scenic designer for Fishkill Playhouse, and directed the Los Angeles-West Coast Premiere of an opera, "El Majo y LaMaja," by Manuel Garcia. For several years, he wrote scripts for the NBC-TV soap opera ANOTHER WORLD, winning one Emmy in 1975 and receiving yet another Emmy nomination in 1976.

Jan estimates he has appeared in about 1500 TV programs, 50 radio shows, and more than 30 feature films. His film work ranges from 1955's SIX BRIDGES TO CROSS, to FALSE IDENTITY (1990). In the late 50s, he co-starred with Kent Taylor and Peter Whitney as the hero of a syndicated western TV series, THE ROUGH RIDERS. Many of his films were also westerns, and he was particularly often associated with Audie Murphy. One of Jan's strangest jobs was performing as the killer in the film THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER. The killer, always in disguise, was ultimately revealed to be a character played by Kirk Douglas, but it was almost always Jan (uncredited) under the makeup throughout the entire film, even including the "final bow" segment at the end taken by Douglas!

Jan married an actress, Patricia Ann Datz, who performed on stage as Patricia Drake, and in films as Patricia Merlin. They had a son, Peter, who works for NASA, and is famous today in his own right as one of the so-called "X-Hunters," aerospace archaeologists who track down the long-lost crash sites of the experimental aircraft and missiles tested at White Sands and other desert locations in the US from the 1940s onward. A couple of years after the untimely death of Patricia, Jan married the charming Barbara Doyle. You could meet them both at the next convention, festival, exposition or rodeo Jan attends as a celebrity guest. [Check here for a current list of upcoming appearances.]

In 1980, Jan turned to crafting novels. His first published novel, BROCADE (the latest edition is titled AINOKO), was originally issued by Avon as a paperback in 1982. As of January, 2009, Jan has seven novels and three non-fiction books currently in print. A list, including links to sources for copies, can be found here.

The novel Jan seems proudest of is GUNBEARER, the first of a projected series set in 19th Century Africa, and bringing to life a native gunbearer-- an actual historical character-- who was involved in the expeditions of a number of famous Victorian explorers. Jan says that this novel is in fact "a love story, with the object of affection being the entire continent of Africa." Jan's novel SHOOTING MONTEZUMA is also based on real incidents which befell Jan himself during the filming of John Houston's THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER, a strained production which perpetrated multiple hoaxes on the viewing audience... truly a case of reality being stranger than fiction.

Today Jan is warmly remembered as a reliable Hollywood character actor whose unique "crazed, baby-faced killer" persona was a favorite of directors. Fans of the Golden Age of live TV (1949 - 56) will always think of him as the irrepressible, sarcastic Space Cadet Roger Manning. Fans of the late-1950s filmed TV Western series will always remember him as the cocky Lt. Cullen Kirby, Confederate officer turned soldier of fortune, on ZIV's ROUGH RIDERS series. But his turns as villain on thousands of different TV shows, from the 1950s into the 1970s and beyond, are equally memorable. As Jan once said, "I must have died on screen more often than any other actor!"

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