Career

Homeier began acting as Skippy Homeier at the age of six, on the radio show Portia Faces Life

Portia Faces Life

Portia Faces Life is a soap opera which began in syndication on April 1, 1940. It was broadcast on some stations that carried NBC programs, although it does not seem to have been an official part of that network's programming...

. From 1943 until 1944 he played the role of Emil in the Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 play, Tomorrow the World. Cast as a child indoctrinated into Nazism

Nazism

Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...

, who is brought to the United States from Germany following the death of his parents, Homeier was praised for his performance. He played the troubled youngster in the 1944 film adaptation and received good reviews playing opposite Fredric March

Fredric March

Fredric March was an American stage and film actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1932 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr...

 and Betty Field

Betty Field

Betty Field was an American film and stage actress. Through her father, she was a direct descendant of the Pilgrims John Alden and Priscilla Mullins....

 as his American uncle and aunt.

Although Homeier worked frequently throughout his childhood and adolescence,
playing wayward youths with no chance of redemption. he did not become a major star, but was able to make a transition from child actor

Child actor

The term child actor or child actress is generally applied to a child acting in motion pictures or television, but also to an adult who began his or her acting career as a child; to avoid confusion, the latter is also called a former child actor...

 to adult, especially in a range of roles as delinquent youths, common in Hollywood films of the 1950s.

In 1954, he guest starred in an episode of the NBC

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

 legal drama

Legal drama

A legal drama is a work of dramatic fiction about crime and civil litigation. Subtypes of legal dramas include courtroom dramas and legal thrillers, and come in all forms, including novels, television shows, and films. Legal drama sometimes overlap with crime drama, most notably in the case of Law...

 Justice

Justice (1954 TV series)

Justice is an NBC half-hour drama television series about attorneys of the Legal Aid Society of New York, which aired from April 8, 1954 to March 25, 1956. In the 1954-1955 season, Justice starred Dane Clark as Richard Adams and Gary Merrill as Jason Tyler. In the 1955-1956 season, William Prince...

, based on cases of the Legal Aid Society of New York. Thereafter, he guest starred on Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen

Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...

's Wanted Dead or Alive, a CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

 series. Homeier played a man sought for a crime who is innocent but distrusts the legal system to provide justice. Fleeing from McQueen in the role of bounty hunter Josh Randall, the Homeier character leaps to his death from a cliff.

At the age of twenty, Homeier played the young gunfighter who badgered and shot down Gregory Peck

Gregory Peck

Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...

 in The Gunfighter

The Gunfighter

The Gunfighter is a 1950 western film starring Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell and Karl Malden . This film was directed by Henry King...

(1950). He then appeared in the Western

Western (genre)

The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...

s The Burning Hills

The Burning Hills

The Burning Hills is a 1956 Warner Bros. CinemaScope Western based on a 1956 novel by Louis L'Amour. The film features young stars popular with the teenagers of the time such as Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood and has a strong emphasis on the importance of tracking....

and with Randolph Scott

Randolph Scott

Randolph Scott was an American film actor whose career spanned from 1928 to 1962. As a leading man for all but the first three years of his cinematic career, Scott appeared in a variety of genres, including social dramas, crime dramas, comedies, musicals , adventure tales, war films, and even a few...

 in Budd Boetticher

Budd Boetticher

Oscar "Budd" Boetticher, Jr. was a film director during the classical period in Hollywood most famous for the series of low-budget Westerns he made in the late 1950s starring Randolph Scott.Known for their sparse style, dramatic rocky locations near Lone Pine, California, and recurring stories of...

's, The Tall T

The Tall T

The Tall T is a 1957 western film directed by Budd Boetticher. It stars Randolph Scott, Richard Boone, Maureen O'Sullivan and Henry Silva. The film was adapted by Burt Kennedy from an Elmore Leonard short story, "The Captives."...

(1957) and Comanche Station

Comanche Station

Comanche Station is a 1960 American CinemaScope western film. This was the last of Budd Boetticher's late 1950s Ranown Cycle western films starring Randolph Scott.-Plot:...

(1960). He played a villain in Day of the Bad Man

He played strong character roles in war film

War film

War films are a film genre concerned with warfare, usually about naval, air or land battles, sometimes focusing instead on prisoners of war, covert operations, military training or other related subjects. At times war films focus on daily military or civilian life in wartime without depicting battles...

s, such as Halls of Montezuma

Halls of Montezuma

Halls of Montezuma may refer to:*Chapultepec, a hill settled by the Aztecs near Tenochtitlan; now a park in Mexico City.*Chapultepec Castle, located on Chapultepec hill...

(1950, Beachhead

Beachhead (film)

Beachhead is a 1954 Technicolor war film based on Captain Richard G. Hubler USMCR's 1945 novel I've Got Mine. It was filmed in Kauai by Aubrey Schenck Productions, released through United Artists and directed by Stuart Heisler.-Plot:...

) and Sam Fuller's Fixed Bayonets (1951).

From 1960 to 1961, Homeier starred in the title role in Dan Raven

Dan Raven

Dan Raven is a crime drama starring Skip Homeier , a former child actor in films, which aired on NBC between January 23, 1960, and January 6, 1961. The setting of the series is the famous Sunset Strip of West Hollywood, California...

, a crime drama on NBC set on the famous Sunset Strip

Sunset Strip

The Sunset Strip is the name given to the mile-and-a-half stretch of Sunset Boulevard that passes through West Hollywood, California. It extends from West Hollywood's eastern border with Hollywood at Harper Avenue, to its western border with Beverly Hills at Sierra Drive...

 of West Hollywood

West Hollywood, California

West Hollywood, a city of Los Angeles County, California, was incorporated on November 29, 1984, with a population of 34,399 at the 2010 census. 41% of the city's population is made up of gay men according to a 2002 demographic analysis by Sara Kocher Consulting for the City of West Hollywood...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, with a number of celebrities appearing in guest roles as themselves. Homeier appeared in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken

The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is a 1966 American Universal Pictures feature film starring Don Knotts as Luther Heggs, a newspaper typesetter who spends a night in a haunted house, which is located in the fictitious community of Rachel, Kansas...

(1966) with Don Knotts

Don Knotts

Jesse Donald "Don" Knotts was an American comedic actor best known for his portrayal of Barney Fife on the 1960s television sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, a role which earned him five Emmy Awards...

. Homeier frequently appeared as a guest star, usually a villain, in all four of Irwin Allen

Irwin Allen

Irwin Allen was a television and film director and producer nicknamed "The Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. He was also notable for creating a number of television series.- Biography :...

's science-fiction series in the mid to late 1960s

1960s

The 1960s was the decade that started on January 1, 1960, and ended on December 31, 1969. It was the seventh decade of the 20th century.The 1960s term also refers to an era more often called The Sixties, denoting the complex of inter-related cultural and political trends across the globe...

. He guest-starred in two episodes of the original Star Trek

Star Trek

Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

television series, "Patterns of Force", and "The Way to Eden".

In the 1970–1971 season, Homeier, at forty, co-starred as Dr. Hugh Jacoby in another series, The Interns

The Interns (television series)

The Interns is an American medical drama series that aired on CBS from 1970 to 1971. It was based on the 1962 film The Interns and the 1964 sequel The New Interns.-Overview:...

, which was based on a film of the same name and aired on CBS. His costars were Broderick Crawford

Broderick Crawford

Broderick Crawford was an Academy Award-winning American stage, film, radio and TV actor, often cast in tough-guy roles and best known for his starring role in the television series "Highway Patrol."-Early life:...

 as the hospital administrator, Christopher Stone

Christopher Stone (actor)

Christopher Stone was an American actor.Stone appeared on film and television from the early 1970s and married actress Dee Wallace in 1980. Together, they appeared in a number of films including the classic horror films The Howling and Cujo...

 as Dr. Jim Hardin, and Mike Farrell

Mike Farrell

Michael Joseph "Mike" Farrell is an American actor, best known for his role as Captain B.J. Hunnicutt on the television series M*A*S*H . He is an activist for politically liberal causes....

 as Dr. Sam Marsh.

External links