by Douglas Snauffer; Epi-log Journal, Spring 1994 Over the years, Larson has truly experienced the best and worst of his profession. The best things, he said, are the simple things. “I’m doing something I love. I’m creating. The first time someone answered the phone on the set and said, Battlestar Galactica—it was such a rush. It sent a chill up my back.” But there is the other end of the spectrum, and the worst times can be devastating. Twice, Larson has had to deal with the deaths of the leading men in his series. One afternoon in the fall of 1984, actor Jon-Erik ... Read More

by Brian Viner; The Independent In December 1971, when I was 10 years old, an American actor called Pete Duel killed himself. To my friends and me, the news came as a horrible blow. Duel played the outlaw Hannibal Heyes, alias Joshua Smith, in our favorite TV show, Alias Smith and Jones. Heyes and his partner Kid Curry, alias Thaddeus Jones, played by Ben Murphy, were icons in the Farnborough Road Junior School playground. They seemed to be able to cope, with unfailing good humor, with everything life threw at them. Yet Duel, it turned out, could not. On New Year’s Eve ... Read More

by Rona Barrett; Rona Barrett's Hollywood, May 1972 SAD GOODBYES.... Hollywood lost several of its brightest faces and names, to the distress of all who love good entertainment. I came back from a sunny vacation to find that not only the beloved MAURICE CHEVALIER had left us, but also a young star with a great future ahead, PETER DUEL. Slowly, in the days that followed PETER's death by self-inflicted gunshot, the details of his life began to be tied together. For instance, it was decided that PETER's part in his Alias Smith and Jones series would definitely be taken over by ROGER ... Read More

by Jeff Rovin, TV Babylon, Signet, New York, 1984, pp. 60-62 With a slight stretch of the imagination, the fate of some suicide victims, such as Brenda Benet, can be regarded as a happy ending. Not so the demise of Peter Duel. He wasn't a lost and saddened figure like Brenda, didn't have Nick Adams's bad luck, or Inger Stevens's fatal sense of isolation. He was simply a young man full of high ambition. Like so many actors before him, Duel's plan had always been to suffer through the TV pap [lacking in substance] in order to make a name for ... Read More

by Roma Wheaton; Forever Young (book), date unknown Success came easily to Peter Deuel (he later dropped the first e in his surname to avoid confusion), a dark-haired, handsome young man with an engaging personality. In the mid sixties, he could be found in nearly every successful American television series. For a short time, he even had his own sitcom, Love on a Rooftop. He cared passionately about every aspect of his life, his work and the quality of it, the world we live in and the way we abuse it. An ardent campaigner for political rights, he was a perfectionist, always ... Read More

Teen Life, January 1972 Pete Duel grew up in the small town of Penfield, New York, a suburb of Rochester. His dad was the town's only doctor and his mother was the nurse. Pete's whole family tree was filled with doctors, but he never really considered the medical profession himself. The one thing he wanted to do from the time he was two years old was become an airplane pilot. A MEMORABLE EVENT During Pete's early boyhood days, his dad introduced him to the wonders of the outdoors. Since Penfield was a rural town, there were plenty of woods and fields around for ... Read More

by Judith Evans, 1999 There would have been this gentle arc of the spirit, like a gossamer winged creature, that would have sprung from my heart and plunged headlong into the liquid, lustrous pools of those chestnut eyes; And your spirit would have leapt in entrechant and, blowing kisses as it crossed the path of my own, arms spread wide— A swan dive—and then hands coming together as it sliced cleanly, as hope does, into the clear, blue ocean of my eyes; And we would have resided there, the way salmon never return to the sea when once they leave its waters, And we would have been forever safe and joyous in each other’s hearts. And you would be here today. And I would be ... Read More

Life Just Wasn't Worth Living Modern Screen's Hollywood Yearbook, 1973 He was young (31), good looking, the star of a successful TV series (Alias Smith and Jones) and had a best gal. He had everything, in fact, except peace of mind. And the prospect of facing 1972 was simply too much for him. So, on December 31, Pete Duel picked up a gun, went into the living room, and shot himself through the head. When his girlfriend, Dianne Ray, rushed into the living room, she found Peter slumped on the floor near a brightly lit Christmas tree. Many reasons have been given ... Read More

The Box Magazine, 1997; No 46 Pete Duel The James Dean of television. After six years of bit parts in series like The Virginian and Marcus Welby, M.D., Duel finally made it big as poker-faced gambling Hannibal Heyes in Alias Smith and Jones. But before the first series had finished running, he had been found shot. Officially it was suicide. It was also a tragic waste; he was 31.

by Walter Scott; Parade Magazine, October 29, 1972 Q. What's this about a Peter Duel cult springing up in England since the actor's death? A. Ever since the star of Alias Smith and Jones shot himself last December, the BBC has received some 7,000 letters a week from fans demanding that the series be aired again. Therefore, the network is using the reruns rather than the programs with his replacement.