STURGEON BAY - His biggest claim to fame likely is as a TV star from a 1970s Saturday morning TV classic, but Spencer Milligan would go one to make a behind-the-scenes impact on Door County's thriving theater scene during the last 30-plus years of his life.
Milligan, an actor, director, writer and producer who most notably played the heroic dad in the iconic 1970s TV show "Land of the Lost," died April 18 in his Sturgeon Bay home at the age of 86, his family recently announced.
Milligan was a native of Oak Park, Illinois, born there in 1937, and regularly appeared in Hollywood movies and TV shows from the 1970s into the '90s. But even while living and working in the L.A. area, he was spending summers in Sturgeon Bay, according to his obituary, before moving to the Peninsula in 1991 and becoming involved with Door County theater.
He didn't appear on stage with any of the local theater companies in those later years, although he appeared with Peninsula Players in the early 1970s. But his local involvement included teaching acting and other theater classes and workshops for children and adults at Third Avenue Playhouse, now called Third Avenue PlayWorks, and directing plays for Theatre M and its founders, well-known Door County actor Mark Moede and Mary White.
Robert Boles, TAP co-director from 2011 to '20, said while Milligan chose not to appear in any of their company's shows, he was vital in helping TAP grow its burgeoning slate of theatrical learning opportunities for all ages, such as its StageKids program, and more than willing to help behind the scenes.
"When (co-director James Valcq) and I arrived in Sturgeon Bay to assume our new positions at TAP, we were told many times that we should meet Spencer Milligan, and so we did," Boles said in an email to the Advocate. "Spencer was very supportive of TAP over the years, teaching classes in film acting to both adults and kids, attending many of our productions, giving us good advice and lots of encouragement – often delivered in one of his many trademark voices laced with his unique sense of humor.
"Spencer was a very funny man and a very kind soul. James and I tried many times to get him on our stage but to no avail. He was content to stay on the sidelines. And we were content to have him stay wherever the hell he wanted to be as long as he included us once in a while."
Milligan directed Moede and White in several of their Theater M productions. Founded in 1991, the smaller company put on unique, edgy and controversial plays mostly in smaller venues that featured characters with deep layers, and Moede said Milligan led him and White to find and explore those layers in a way few directors might have been able to do. He said as a director and teacher, Milligan challenged the actors but helped Theatre M's shows and characters achieve a depth they otherwise might not have found.
"Certainly not," Moede said when asked if Theatre M would have done as well as it did without Milligan's direction or input.
"(He) challenged us to do some 'real' theater. … Painful, sad, funny and very difficult, and we laughed, cried, shouted and managed to put up some very successful shows. (He) directed us to discover our own characters, made us work to find truth in our presentation, kept it simple and ultimately made some very memorable productions."
Moede specifically cited Milligan directing him in a show of one-act plays by Tennessee Williams at Town Hall Bakery in Jacksonport. One of the one-acts was "Auto-da-Fe," in which the sexuality of the lead character, played by Moede, is repressed by an uptight, moralistic mother.
"When I was going for it, I was going for what I thought the character was with the tools I had in my toolbox," Moede told the Advocate about that experience. "He made us find things in that character that suggested there might be this character trait or that character trait. To find a character trait that you can repeat every night for the character to achieve its catharsis and the audience to understand it, Spencer provided those things."
Milligan also directed Moede in "The Revival of Billy Sunday," a Gerald Plummer work looking at the titular world-famous traveling preacher of the early 20th century. The show ran at Woodwalk Gallery in Egg Harbor, and Moede said Milligan brought out the firebrand evangelism in him so well that they had to tell audiences before or after the shows that it was in fact a show, not an actual old-fashioned tent revival meeting.
"Spencer's direction made that show what it was," Moede said.
Moede said he felt he, White and Milligan worked well together and became friends as well because they seemed to share an interest in offbeat and controversial works, which Moede and White brought to Theatre M. They met, in fact, when Milligan stopped in to watch Theatre M's 1997 production of "St. Mary Ignatius Explains It All" at Town Hall Bakery.
"Spencer came in one day when we were doing a show at the bakery," Moede said. "He saw it, had some comments on it, as he did on everything (laughs). He liked it, and we liked him. … The show was controversial. Spencer liked that, so did we. It was a basic ideology we shared."
Moede acknowledged Milligan could be forceful in his direction, but he would be kind and funny as well, depending on the point he was trying to make and the layers he was trying to extract from his actors. He said Milligan also often was theatrical when giving direction, even at times using hand puppets that he carried with him to illustrate his point.
"He loved funny things, loved being funny. He was always being theatrical, no matter where he was. In his heart, he was a very good person who had a feeling for the downtrodden."
"He was a kind yet very exacting director," White said. "Rehearsing a play with Spencer was fun. Sometimes I would pretend to not understand a line or a scene so we could see him act. He would take the stage and play the roles to perfection. Spencer was a loving, generous man and a funny, mischievous trickster who relished the absurdities of life."
Milligan trained to be an actor at Chicago's Goodman Theatre and appeared on stage in Chicago-area productions throughout the late 1950s and early '60s, before he joined the U.S. Army. After his honorable discharge from the Army in 1966, he went on to study with famed acting and directing teachers Lee Strasberg in New York and Joan Darling in Los Angeles.
His movie debut came as a colorful party host in the 1973 Woody Allen sci-fi comedy, "Sleeper," then the next year he had a larger role as the best friend of the title protagonist in the thriller "The Photographer."
That year, 1974, also saw Milligan begin his two-season run as Rick Marshall, the father of two children, on "Land of the Lost." For 30 Saturday morning episodes over two seasons, he and his children (played by Kathy Coleman and Wesley Eure) dodged dinosaurs and other dangers and battled the lizard/human-like Sleestak after the family was transported via a "dimension portal" to a far different time.
Milligan left the show in 1975 over a dispute largely about the lack of royalties for he and his co-stars from extensive and popular "Land of the Lost" merchandise, from toys and coloring books to lunch boxes and View-Master reels. The show has become a favorite in recent years of 1970s TV buffs.
“It’s part of my life,” Milligan said about the show in a 2010 interview with Advocate columnist Jon Gast. “It’s not my full life. For the time, I thought it was very good. We had some fun with it. It’s a part of television history. There’s just something about it.”
He went on to appear as a guest star in numerous TV shows, with roles on serious crime dramas such as "Quincy, M.E." and "Mike Hammer," comedies and lighter fare like "Alice," "Police Squad!" and "The Dukes of Hazzard," the long-running Western "Gunsmoke" and a seven-episode run in 1987 on the soap opera "General Hospital."
Milligan's obituary says one of his favorite roles was in the 1976 made-for-TV movie "The Keegans" as as an NFL quarterback who's accused of murdering the man who attacked his sister. He last took part in a movie doing voice-over work on the 2020 animated film "The Last Page of Summer," with his character playing the father to characters voiced by his TV kids Coleman and Eure as well as Phillip Paley, who played their primate-like young friend Cha-Ka on "Land of the Lost."
Milligan is survived by his wife, Kerry Milligan, who he met in Sturgeon Bay in 1991 and married in 2002; and godchildren Andee Solis, Hilary Williams and Spencer Williams, along with friends and other associates. Huehns Funeral Home and Door County Crematory in Sturgeon Bay handled arrangements. Donations in Milligan's name may be directed to the Entertainment Community Fund (formerly called the Actor’s Fund), a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting performers and entertainment professionals in times of need.
To share thoughts and photos with Milligan's family or for more information, visit huehnsfuneralhome.com.
Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or cclough@gannett.com.
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