Joseph Peter Breck

 Joseph Peter Breck (March 13, 1929 – February 6, 2012)

The rugged, dark-haired Breck played the gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday on the ABC/Warner Bros. television series Maverick but is best known for his role as Victoria Barkley's (Barbara Stanwyck) hot-tempered, middle son Nick in the popular 1960s ABC/Four Star Western, The Big Valley. Breck was also the leading man in an earlier ABC/Four Star Western television series entitled Black Saddle. After post-World War II United States Navy service in the 1940s on the aircraft carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt (CV-42), Breck played professional basketball for the Rochester Royals during the 1948-49 season. He then worked as a ranch hand while studying drama at the University of Houston, and went on to make his on-screen debut in a film that was eventually released under the title The Beatniks. As well as performing in live theater, Breck had several guest-starring roles on a number of popular series, such as Sea Hunt, several episodes of Wagon Train, Have Gun – Will Travel, Perry Mason and Gunsmoke. In 1956, he and David Janssen appeared in John Bromfield's syndicated series Sheriff of Cochise in the episode entitled "The Turkey Farmers". He appeared in another syndicated series too in the episode "The Deserter" of the American Civil War drama Gray Ghost, with Tod Andrews in the title role. From January 1959 to May 1960 Breck starred as Clay Culhane, the gunfighter-turned-lawyer in the ABC western Black Saddle, with secondary roles for Russell Johnson, Anna-Lisa, J. Pat O'Malley and Walter Burke. Unlike in The Big Valley, in which Breck played an easily angered rancher, he is low-key, restrained and considerate as the lawyer Culhane. Breck was later a contract star with Warner Bros. Television, where he appeared as Doc Holliday on Maverick. In 1969, Breck was cast in an episode of The Donald O'Connor Show. Most of his roles in the 1970s and 1980s were television guest-starring performances on such series as Alias Smith and Jones, Mission: Impossible, McMillan & Wife, S.W.A.T., The Six Million Dollar Man (again with Lee Majors), The Incredible Hulk and The Dukes of Hazzard, as well as roles as himself on Fantasy Island, and The Fall Guy which also starred former television "brother" Lee Majors.

In June 2010 Breck's wife Diane announced on his website that the actor had been suffering from dementia and could no longer sign autographs for fans, although she said that he still read and enjoyed their letters. Despite this diagnosis, she said he was still physically healthy and did not require medication. Thereafter, Diane Breck reported that her husband was hospitalized on January 10, 2012. On February 6, 2012 Peter Breck died from his illness at the age of 82.