FoJ Marsden has informed me of the sad passing of actor Lance LeGault. Once the movie and (particularly) TV universe offered a myriad of character actors like this, those guys whose names you always didn’t know but whose faces you surely did. Every time one of the ever diminishing number of these actors leaves us, it brings us closer to the demise of an entire era.
Mr. LeGault, like many of his compatriots, made his buck mostly playing hardasses of one sort or other. Some actors specialized in heavies, or cops (often with a lot of overlap), while Mr. LeGualt most prominently played a lot of hardbitten military officers.
Mr. LeGault started as a bit player / stuntman in a handful of Elvis musicals, before finding his niche as a TV guest star. Once established he became one of those guys who seemingly appeared on every TV show you can think of. The list of genre shows Mr. LeGault appeared on is lengthy; Land of the Giants, Logan’s Run, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk, the awful Reb Brown Captain America pilot, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Voyagers! As (President Andrew Jackson), Knight Rider, Automan, Airwolf, Quantum Leap, Star Trek: The Next Generation, etc. Then toss in about every cop / action show of the period to boot; Columbo, MacGyver, Rockford Files, and so on.
Only later in his career did Mr. LaGault start scoring some recurring roles. He appeared 10 times as Col. Greene on Magnum PI. More memorably he was Col. Decker on The A-Team, the guy who always showed up just in time to see the guy’s plane or van making its escape. Mr. LeGault also did the Javert thing in Fox’s early program Werewolf, pursuing the hirsute hero as the indefatigable bounty hunter ‘Alamo’ Joe Rogan. I’m not sure if that was him hosting Fear Factor, however.
Mr. LeGault passed away on September 10th at the age of 77.
