The Life and Tragic Death at 47 of Richard Long, ‘The Big Valley’ and ‘Nanny and the Professor’ Star

There are certain television actors whose presence lingers with audiences long after the screen fades to black, performers who seem dependable and familiar until suddenly they’re gone far too soon. Bill Bixby was one of those figures, and so was Richard Long, remembered by generations of viewers as Jarrod Barkley on the TV Western The Big Valley and Professor Harold Everett on Nanny and the Professor. Handsome, intelligent and effortlessly likable, Long built a career that stretched from films of the 1940s into some of television’s most beloved series. Yet behind the polished image was a life marked by professional frustrations, turbulent relationships and serious health struggles that ultimately claimed him at only 47 years old. His story is one of remarkable perseverance mixed with undeniable heartbreak.

Born on December 17, 1927, in Chicago, Richard was the fifth of six children born to Sherman D. Long, a commercial artist, and his wife, Dale McCord Long. The family relocated to California in 1944, settling in Hollywood just as Richard was entering his senior year at Hollywood High School. Acting was hardly part of some grand ambition at the time. In fact, as Long later admitted, “I had no intention of becoming an actor. I took a senior drama class because it was a snap course and I needed the credit for my English requirement.”

THE BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE (1946): “Richard got his film start more or less by accident. Jack Murton, a member of International’s casting department, thumbed a ride one day from a couple of Hollywood High School boys. In the course of casual conversation, he learned that the school would have a stage play within a few days and that a kid by the name of Dick Long had set the drama instructors abuzz in one of the leading roles. Murton, on the watch for a youthful actor to play a would-be flier in his studio’s production of the Gwen Bristow novel Tomorrow is Forever, sent for Long just to have a look at him. After seeing him, Murton arranged for producers David Lewis and Irving Pichel to listen to him read some lines. Lewis and Pichel had him before the test cameras the following day and it wasn’t long after William Goetz, the studio head, saw the resulting ‘rushes’ that Long was signed to a film contract. The high school play that Long was in was called Louisiana Susie and it was his first attempt at acting except for the time, when he was only 12, he appeared as the school teacher in Tom Sawyer in a Chicago church.”

Richard’s arrival in Hollywood came at precisely the right moment. After being discovered while still in high school, he quickly found himself working alongside some of the biggest names in the business. His film debut came in 1946’s Tomorrow is Forever, where he played the son of characters portrayed by Claudette Colbert and Orson Welles. Welles, recognizing something special in the young actor, wasted little time bringing him into another project, casting him later that same year in The Stranger, which Welles also directed. Before long, Richard was appearing in one prestigious production after another, including The Dark Mirror, sharing the screen with Olivia de Havilland and Lew Ayres.

Universal clearly saw potential in him, and throughout the late 1940s and early ’50s, he became a familiar face in a steady stream of productions. He reunited with Claudette Colbert for 1947’s The Egg and I, starring alongside Fred MacMurray, then moved easily between genres with films like the Civil War drama Tap Roots (1948), the comedy The Life of Riley (1949), Burt Lancaster’s noir classic Criss Cross (1949), and the Western Kansas Raiders (1950). Audiences also saw him in several entries of Universal’s successful Ma and Pa Kettle series before he appeared in 1951’s Air Cadet. But just as his acting career seemed to be gaining momentum, world events intervened. Shortly after completing Air Cadet, Richard was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He spent two years in military service before receiving an honorable discharge in 1952.

THE ITHACA JOURNAL (1953): “During his two-year stretch, he rose to the rank of private first class. He performed in Special Services in Tokyo as a disc jockey and radio actor for programs beamed to the troops. Did his movies follow him around? ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I always got a peculiar reaction from the other soldiers. They’d say, “Hey, Long, I saw you in the movie last night.” And that’s all they’d say. No comment or anything.’”

Between 1952’s Back at the Front and 1964’s Make Like a Thief, Richard starred in a dozen films, but somehow he never quite met the promise of his early career in terms of stardom.

RICHARD LONG: “When I was under contract to Universal-International, I couldn’t seem to get any kind of role but the boy next door or Madison Avenue types.” (Freeport Journal-Standard, 1959)

“I’ve never been a big star, but I’m grateful that I’ve been acting for 22 years and I’ve always made good money without having the awesome responsibility of stardom. Really, I had the longest awkward period in show business because I looked so young for so long. I spent 10 years at one studio, starting when I was 17. All I could play in those 10 years were brother roles and son roles, because I was too young for mature parts.” (Star-Gazette, 1966)

While Richard’s professional career continued moving forward, his personal life during the 1950s was far less stable. In 1952, newspapers reported that he was planning to marry a woman named Mary Briggs, who had connections to both Northern California and San Angelo, Texas, where the ceremony was expected to take place. Oddly, after the initial reports surfaced, the relationship seemed to vanish from public view entirely, with no further mention of a wedding ever appearing in print.

Not long afterward, Richard became involved with actress Suzan Ball, one of Hollywood’s rising young stars. Their romance quickly grew serious, and the two made plans to marry. But tragedy entered the picture in 1953 when doctors discovered tumors in Suzan’s legs and diagnosed her with cancer. Despite the devastating prognosis, the couple remained committed to one another and continued planning a future together even as Suzan began what would become a painful medical battle.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS (1955): “When Suzan Ball lost her right leg to cancer early last year, her courage touched the hearts of all who learned of her tragic fate. Three months later, on April 11, 1954, Suzan married actor Richard Long and walked down the aisle, as she had vowed she would, on an artificial limb.” Celebrity guests at their wedding included Jeff Chandler, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh and David Janssen.

THE SACRAMENTO BEE (1955): “It was hoped the amputation would cure her of cancer. But a year ago, doctors told her husband, Long, that the illness had recurred. He kept the sad news from Suzan and they went ahead with a nightclub engagement. ‘It was what Suzan wanted to do,’ Long said. He managed to keep her unaware of her true condition until about three months ago. ‘Sure, she was disheartened,’ said Long, ‘but she came through it beautifully. Of course, you never really know how you will take it until it happens to you, but I know I could never take it as beautifully as she has.’”

RICHARD LONG: “It’s a strange disease. It can be going on in your body without you knowing it. Unless it touches a nerve, there is no pain or discomfort. When Suzan did have some trouble, we managed to camouflage the symptoms as something else. The doctors thought it would be better that way in order to keep up her mental attitude. She was in and out of Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Hollywood. Finally, we couldn’t keep the news from her.” (The San Bernardino County Sun)

By the end of the 1950s, Richard began transitioning away from films and into the rapidly expanding world of television. In 1959, Warner Bros. cast him in the detective series Bourbon Street Beat, where he played private investigator Rex Randolph opposite Andrew Duggan’s Cal Calhoun. Although the series only lasted a single season and 39 episodes, the studio clearly believed Long had connected with audiences. Rather than simply letting the character disappear with the cancellation, Warner Bros. did something virtually unheard of at the time: they transferred both Richard and the Rex Randolph character into another successful detective series, 77 Sunset Strip. There, Long joined Efram Zimbalist Jr.’s Stuart Bailey, creating what is generally regarded as the first instance of a television character moving directly from one weekly series into another.

Ironically, even though television was providing him with some of the steadiest work of his career, Richard himself seemed increasingly frustrated with the limitations of series television. The repetitive nature of weekly production and formula storytelling apparently wore on him more than audiences realized, and he often spoke candidly about the creative dissatisfaction that could come with starring in a long-running show.

RICHARD LONG: “Show me an actor who expresses increasing enthusiasm for his series and I’ll show you a man who isn’t an actor. I hope I’ve had it with series. Not only the stars, but the featured players find the sameness of their roles irritating after a time. The stories are usually contrived and lacking vitality.” (Star-Gazette, 1952)

Throughout the 1960s, Richard became a familiar face to television audiences through a steady stream of guest appearances on some of the era’s most popular programs, including Wagon Train, Have Gun, Will Travel, Lawman, Maverick, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. The medium that had once frustrated him was now providing him with the kind of variety he had long wanted as an actor, allowing him to move between Westerns, mysteries, suspense dramas and science fiction with ease.

That success eventually led him back to weekly series television in a major way when he joined the cast of The Big Valley in 1965. Set on the sprawling Barkley Ranch near Stockton, California, during the late 19th century, the Western centered on one of the region’s most powerful families. Legendary actress Barbara Stanwyck headed the cast as Victoria Barkley, the strong-willed matriarch trying to hold the family together following the death of her husband. Richard played her oldest son, Jarrod Barkley, a polished attorney whose calm intelligence often balanced the fiery temperament of his younger brother Nick, portrayed by Peter Breck. Completing the family were Linda Evans as Audra Barkley and Lee Majors as Heath Barkley, the rancher’s illegitimate son whose arrival added ongoing tension and drama to the series.

RICHARD LONG: “The Big Valley had everything if it could crystallize into a style. I think we’re in that stage of crystallizing now. Part of the attraction of the series is that we are as a family not always right. We just do the best we can under the circumstances. No superheroes, just human beings. And that’s what people identify with.” (1966)

GEOFFREY MARK (pop culture historian): “Richard Long was one of those actors who became famous right at the tail end of the Golden Age of Hollywood. I mean, he got to work with Orson Wells for heaven’s sake, who, while still young and handsome, had to convert over to television because he never had been a huge movie star and even huge movie stars were having trouble getting work when everything went independent. He kept his name alive with The Big Valley, which was a hit, but a hit on ABC, which is not exactly the same thing in the 60s. And he’s working with a major talent on that show. But there was a shelf life for him. Nanny and the Professor was his last gasp.”

That show saw him costarring with Juliet Mills in Nanny and the Professor, playing widowed Professor Harold Everett opposite Mills’ magical Phoebe Figalilly.

ED ROBERTSON (TV historian, host of Television Confidential): “It was a nice role for him. As I understand it, it got to show a lot more of his real-life personality in that he was very dry and droll and very, very funny off camera.”

JULIET MILLS: “They made a mistake in not allowing a romance; they were so prudish in those days. Towards the end of the show, people were constantly saying, ‘When are you and the Professor going to get together?’ Anything that was there was never in the script; it was between Richard and me.”

He co-starred with Julie Harris in the short-lived 1973 sitcom Thicker Than Water.

RICHARD LONG: “I’m delighted to be working with Julie. She’s a great performer with a meticulous sense of timing that is so all-important in comedy.” (The Post-Star)

KAREN VALENTINE (co-star with Richard Long in The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped): “Richard Long had been acting almost as long as I’d been living when I had the pleasure of working with him. He was not only a lovely actor, he was also very classy, a gentleman, easy going, quite handsome, and totally professional. I really enjoyed working with him.”

GEOFFREY MARK: “During that time, he was also gaining weight; he wasn’t the pretty boy he had once been and Nanny and the Professor hadn’t revolved around him. He wasn’t really the star of that show; Ms. Mills was, which leads to decline. When you’re thrown away by show business, unless you have a very secure ego of who you are as a person and have put money in the bank just in case, it’s a difficult road. So, from being this bright light, this hot young actor making big-time films and then going to television, you just watched his career decline from slowly from the late 40s into the 70s. And almost as soon as Nanny and the Professor goes away, he starts to get ill.”

Behind the success Richard enjoyed onscreen, his private life was often marked by emotional upheaval, nowhere more dramatically than in his turbulent marriage to actress and model Mara Corday. The couple married in 1957, but their relationship quickly became known for its volatility, fueled by jealousy, possessiveness and repeated separations. Looking back years later, Mara was candid about the difficulties they faced together. “Richard couldn’t stand to have me working in the business after we married in 1957,” she explained. “I was tremendously jealous of him and he was terribly possessive of me.”

Yet despite the chaos, there remained an undeniable bond between them that neither fully escaped. Mara later reflected, “Richard Long was an enigma. I divorced him 10 times the first year of our marriage … and 13 times the second year. He’d plead, literally on his hands and knees, ‘Please forgive me.’ I loved him and I am still in love with him.”

Compounding the emotional strain was Richard’s steadily deteriorating health. As a child, he had suffered pneumonia severe enough to permanently weaken his heart, and the consequences would shadow him for the rest of his life. Over the years, he endured multiple heart attacks, though he reportedly refused to curb his heavy smoking and drinking habits.

JULIET MILLS: “He’d had a heart attack when he was 30 and didn’t look after himself at all in the sense that he just drank and smoked, had 15 cups of coffee a day and cocktails started at six. I remember when we were doing the last shot of the day, always at 5:30, Richard would be saying, ‘Uh, the ice is melting. Come on.’ He burned the candle at both ends and knew that he had a problem, but he said to me, ‘I want to live the way I want to live. I don’t want to be treated like an invalid.’ I don’t know if he really thought all of that was going to end his life as soon as it did. But he was a happy guy, lived a great life and he was full of life while he was alive. It was a very great shock when he died.”

In 1974, following yet another heart attack, he spent a month recovering at Tarzana Medical Center in Los Angeles. Sadly, his body could no longer keep fighting. Richard Long died on December 21, 1974, only four days after celebrating his 47th birthday.

RICHARD LONG: “Doing a series is like taking your money to Las Vegas. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. You pick something you believe in, do the best you can and see what happens.”

And with tragic irony, he once joked to Mara Corday, “You know, I’ll probably die on a weekend and nobody will know. Who reads papers on weekends?”

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This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 2:07 PM.