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Adam Roarke

Adam Roarke built a screen career that moved from early television to the rougher edges of American genre filmmaking. Born in Brooklyn on August 8, 1937, Roarke had an unconventional path toward acting: he was a street gang member in his youth, while show business was already part of the family through his father, a vaudeville comedian, and his mother, a chorus line dancer and showgirl. He began acting under the names Jordan Gerler and Jordan Grant. After signing with Universal Studios in 1957, he was required to adopt another name because the studio already had Cary Grant under contract. As Adam Roarke, he appeared in several television series during the late 1950s and early 1960s, including the role of Communications Officer Garrison in the original Star Trek pilot. Roarke became closely associated with the biker pictures released by American International Pictures in the late 1960s. Working in films alongside Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson and Bruce Dern, he entered that cycle with Hells Angels on Wheels in 1967 and remained part of it through The Losers, later retitled Nam’s Angels, in 1970. Those films placed him squarely within a strain of restless, hard-driving American cinema that favored outsiders, motorcycles and open-road danger. He reunited on screen with Fonda in the financially successful 1974 car-chase film Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, also starring Susan George. The role gave Roarke an opportunity to show more of his acting range beyond the biker-film image. His breakout role arrived in 1980 with The Stunt Man. Roarke played Raymond Bailey, a self-important leading man whose stunt double was portrayed by Steve Railsback. It was a fitting part for an actor who had spent years moving between television and genre pictures: a movie-star role viewed from the complicated machinery of filmmaking itself. Roarke continued to be identified as both a film and television actor until his death in 1996.