Wesley Eure
Encyclopedia
Wesley Eure is an American
actor.
Eure came to prominence when he appeared in two long running television series in the 1970s, Days of our Lives
and Land of the Lost
. For several years, he appeared in both shows simultaneously. Eure is also a singer, author, producer, director, charity fundraiser, and lecturer.
, where he dreamed of being in show business from the age of five, and starred as an oak tree in an elementary school play. He studied acting in the theatre arts department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
and at summer workshops at Southern Illinois University
and Northwestern University
. His first break came when he was working part-time at a Las Vegas
hotel selling paintings. There he met Robert Goulet
, who hired Eure as a production assistant for the Goulet-Carol Lawrence summer tour.
The tour terminated in New York City
. After a few short months of auditions and odd jobs (including computerized astrology predictions), Eure became a cast member at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut
. He joined such notables as Jane Alexander
and Sada Thompson
in The Tempest
, Mourning Becomes Electra
, Merry Wives of Windsor, and Twelfth Night, as well as many original works produced by the company. At the Bucks County Playhouse
in Pennsylvania
, he performed in West Side Story and then joined a musical comedy revue and traveled throughout the East Coast resort areas.
, Eure was hired to star in Kaye Ballard's projected new series, The Organic Vegetables, created and produced by the team who did The Monkees
. Subsequently, Eure was hired to replace David Cassidy
on The Partridge Family
, but the show was canceled before a new season started.
For eight years, he starred in NBC-TV's Emmy-winning Days of our Lives
, playing the role of Mike Horton. He also starred as Will Marshall in Sid and Marty Krofft
's popular children's adventure series, Land of the Lost
, which led NBC
's Saturday morning line-up for three years.
Eure co-produced, wrote and acted in Fox Television's hidden-camera shows Totally Hidden Video
and Payback. He also wrote and directed Spy TV
for NBC
. He was the host of Nickelodeon
game show Finders Keepers. He co-created PBS Kids
’s Emmy-nominated animated series for preschoolers called Dragon Tales
, now in its sixth year. It is produced by The Children’s Television Workshop
and Sony Pictures.
Eure also hosted an educational DVD called Power Over Poison to teach kids how to avoid poisons, produced by WQED, the PBS station in Pittsburgh
. Eure was a regular on such game shows as Password and Match Game. Channel 9 TV in Australia
hired Wesley to be the permanent host of their Tonight Show, but lost a ten-month immigration battle with Actor's Equity in Australia.
's comedy C.H.O.M.P.S, which also starred Valerie Bertinelli
, Red Buttons, Jim Backus
, Hermione Baddeley
and Conrad Bain
. He appeared as the fiendish murderer in The Toolbox Murders
and the nasty guy who gets eaten by snakes in Jennifer
. About his time filming Jennifer, Eure claims he had a difficult time working with the various snakes on set, including the large Boa snake that features during the climax.
According to his website and a recent interview, Eure and his Land of the Lost
co-star, Kathy Coleman
will no longer have cameo appearances in the 2009 film, Land of the Lost
starring Will Ferrell
, as they were edited out of the final cut. http://www.afterelton.com/people/2009/6/wesleyeure
, and was optioned by Disney for a full-length animated feature. The book was illustrated by Ron Palillo
--Arnold Horshack on the 1970s TV series Welcome Back, Kotter
.
Wesley’s fifth book, A Fish Out of Water, is his first pre-schooler book. The story of a bird and a fish that fall in love and make it work, it is used by schools to teach racial tolerance. The graduate art students at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina illustrate it. His new book, The Whale That Ate the Storm, will soon be released.
Knightsbridge Publishing released two of his humor books, Fun with Fax and On-the-Wall Off-the-Wall Office Humor.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
actor.
Eure came to prominence when he appeared in two long running television series in the 1970s, Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives is a long running daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around...
and Land of the Lost
Land of the Lost (1974 TV series)
Land of the Lost is a children's television series co-created and produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. During its original run, it was broadcast on the NBC television network....
. For several years, he appeared in both shows simultaneously. Eure is also a singer, author, producer, director, charity fundraiser, and lecturer.
Early career
Eure's childhood was spent in Hattiesburg, MississippiHattiesburg, Mississippi
Hattiesburg is a city in Forrest County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 44,779 at the 2000 census . It is the county seat of Forrest County...
, where he dreamed of being in show business from the age of five, and starred as an oak tree in an elementary school play. He studied acting in the theatre arts department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
University of Nevada-Las Vegas is a public, coeducational university located in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada, USA. The campus is located approximately east of the Las Vegas Strip. The institution includes a Shadow Lane Campus, located just east of the University Medical Center of...
and at summer workshops at Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a state university system based in Carbondale, Illinois, in the Southern Illinois region of the state, with multiple campuses...
and Northwestern University
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
. His first break came when he was working part-time at a Las Vegas
Las Vegas, Nevada
Las Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
hotel selling paintings. There he met Robert Goulet
Robert Goulet
Robert Gerard Goulet was a Canadian American entertainer as a singer and actor. He played the role of Lancelot in the Broadway musical Camelot of 1960.-Early life:...
, who hired Eure as a production assistant for the Goulet-Carol Lawrence summer tour.
The tour terminated in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. After a few short months of auditions and odd jobs (including computerized astrology predictions), Eure became a cast member at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut
Stratford, Connecticut
Stratford is a town in Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States, located on Long Island Sound at the mouth of the Housatonic River. It was founded by Puritans in 1639....
. He joined such notables as Jane Alexander
Jane Alexander
Jane Alexander is an American actress, author, and former director of the National Endowment for the Arts. Although perhaps best known for playing the female lead in The Great White Hope on both stage and screen, Alexander has played a wide array of roles in both theater and film and has committed...
and Sada Thompson
Sada Thompson
Sada Carolyn Thompson was an American stage, film, and television actress.-Life and career:Born in Des Moines, Iowa in 1927 to Hugh Woodruff Thompson and his wife Corlyss , and raised in New Jersey, Thompson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, after...
in The Tempest
The Tempest
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where Prospero, the exiled Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place,...
, Mourning Becomes Electra
Mourning Becomes Electra
Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932...
, Merry Wives of Windsor, and Twelfth Night, as well as many original works produced by the company. At the Bucks County Playhouse
Bucks County Playhouse
The Bucks County Playhouse is the State Theater of Pennsylvania, and is located in New Hope, Pennsylvania.When the Hope Mills burnt in 1790, the grist mills were rebuilt as the New Hope Mills by Benjamin Parry. ....
in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
, he performed in West Side Story and then joined a musical comedy revue and traveled throughout the East Coast resort areas.
Television
After moving to Los AngelesLos Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
, Eure was hired to star in Kaye Ballard's projected new series, The Organic Vegetables, created and produced by the team who did The Monkees
The Monkees
The Monkees are an American pop rock group. Assembled in Los Angeles in 1966 by Robert "Bob" Rafelson and Bert Schneider for the American television series The Monkees, which aired from 1966 to 1968, the musical acting quartet was composed of Americans Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork,...
. Subsequently, Eure was hired to replace David Cassidy
David Cassidy
David Bruce Cassidy is an American actor, singer, songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for his role as the character of Keith Partridge in the 1970s musical/sitcom The Partridge Family. He was one of pop culture's most celebrated teen idols, enjoying a successful pop career in the 1970s, and...
on The Partridge Family
The Partridge Family
The Partridge Family is an American television sitcom about a widowed mother and her five children who embark on a music career. The series originally ran from September 25, 1970 until August 31, 1974, the last new episode airing on March 23, 1974, on the ABC network, as part of a Friday-night lineup...
, but the show was canceled before a new season started.
For eight years, he starred in NBC-TV's Emmy-winning Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives
Days of our Lives is a long running daytime soap opera broadcast on the NBC television network. It is one of the longest-running scripted television programs in the world, airing nearly every weekday in the United States since November 8, 1965. It has since been syndicated to many countries around...
, playing the role of Mike Horton. He also starred as Will Marshall in Sid and Marty Krofft
Sid and Marty Krofft
Sid Krofft and Marty Krofft , are a sibling team of television producers who were influential in children's television and variety show programs in the USA, particularly throughout the 1970s and early 1980s....
's popular children's adventure series, Land of the Lost
Land of the Lost (1974 TV series)
Land of the Lost is a children's television series co-created and produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. During its original run, it was broadcast on the NBC television network....
, which led 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...
's Saturday morning line-up for three years.
Eure co-produced, wrote and acted in Fox Television's hidden-camera shows Totally Hidden Video
Totally Hidden Video
Totally Hidden Video was an American television show that aired on the Fox Network from 1989 to 1992, with Steve Skrovan as host for the first two years and Mark Pitta taking over in 1991...
and Payback. He also wrote and directed Spy TV
Spy TV
Spy TV is an American hidden camera reality television series hosted by Michael Ian Black and Ali Landry. The show was broadcast on NBC in which pranks were pulled on people by their friends. The show was cancelled after two seasons....
for 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...
. He was the host of Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...
game show Finders Keepers. He co-created PBS Kids
PBS Kids
PBS Kids is the brand for children's programming aired by the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States founded in 1993. As with all PBS programming, PBS Kids programming is non-commercial. It is aimed at children ages 2 to 10...
’s Emmy-nominated animated series for preschoolers called Dragon Tales
Dragon Tales
Dragon Tales is an American animated pre-school children's television series chronicling the adventures of two siblings, Max and Emmy and their dragon friends Cassie, Ord, Zak, Wheezie, and Quetzal...
, now in its sixth year. It is produced by The Children’s Television Workshop
Sesame Workshop
Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children's Television Workshop , is a Worldwide American non-profit organization behind the production of several educational children's programs that have run on public broadcasting around the world...
and Sony Pictures.
Eure also hosted an educational DVD called Power Over Poison to teach kids how to avoid poisons, produced by WQED, the PBS station in Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...
. Eure was a regular on such game shows as Password and Match Game. Channel 9 TV in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
hired Wesley to be the permanent host of their Tonight Show, but lost a ten-month immigration battle with Actor's Equity in Australia.
Film
Eure received top billing in Hanna-BarberaHanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
's comedy C.H.O.M.P.S, which also starred Valerie Bertinelli
Valerie Bertinelli
Valerie Anne Bertinelli is an American actress, best known for her roles as Barbara Cooper Royer on the television series One Day at a Time , Gloria on the television series Touched by an Angel and Melanie Moretti on the sitcom Hot in Cleveland .- Early years :Bertinelli was born in Wilmington,...
, Red Buttons, Jim Backus
Jim Backus
James Gilmore "Jim" Backus was a radio, television, film, and voice actor. Among his most famous roles are the voice of Mr...
, Hermione Baddeley
Hermione Baddeley
Hermione Baddeley was an English character actress of theatre, film and television. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Room at the Top and a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here...
and Conrad Bain
Conrad Bain
Conrad Stafford Bain is a Canadian-American actor. His television credits include a leading role as Phillip Drummond in the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes and as Dr. Arthur Harmon on Maude.-Personal life:...
. He appeared as the fiendish murderer in The Toolbox Murders
The Toolbox Murders
The Toolbox Murders is a 1978 slasher film starring Cameron Mitchell, Tim Donnelly, Pamelyn Ferdin, and Wesley Eure. It is notorious for its reputation as a video nasty due to its violent murder scenes in the film's first act...
and the nasty guy who gets eaten by snakes in Jennifer
Jennifer (1978 film)
Jennifer is a 1978 horror film directed by Brice Mack, starring Lisa Pelikan. The story has some similarities to the 1976 classic Carrie, about a social misfit with psychic powers who gets revenge on her cruel classmates. The original music score is composed by Porter Jordan. The film's tagline is:...
. About his time filming Jennifer, Eure claims he had a difficult time working with the various snakes on set, including the large Boa snake that features during the climax.
According to his website and a recent interview, Eure and his Land of the Lost
Land of the Lost (1974 TV series)
Land of the Lost is a children's television series co-created and produced by Sid and Marty Krofft. During its original run, it was broadcast on the NBC television network....
co-star, Kathy Coleman
Kathy Coleman
Kathy Coleman is a former American child actress who is known for playing Holly Marshall in the children's TV show Land of the Lost, a cult favorite...
will no longer have cameo appearances in the 2009 film, Land of the Lost
Land of the Lost (film)
Land of the Lost is a 2009 American science-fiction comedy film directed by Brad Silberling and starring Will Ferrell, Danny McBride and Anna Friel, based on the 1974 Sid and Marty Krofft TV series of the same name.-Plot:...
starring Will Ferrell
Will Ferrell
John William "Will" Ferrell is an American comedian, impressionist, actor, and writer. Ferrell first established himself in the late 1990s as a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, and has subsequently starred in the comedy films Old School, Elf, Anchorman, Talladega...
, as they were edited out of the final cut. http://www.afterelton.com/people/2009/6/wesleyeure
Books
His children's novel The Red Wings of Christmas, published by Pelican, has been called "the new American classic" by CNNCNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, and was optioned by Disney for a full-length animated feature. The book was illustrated by Ron Palillo
Ron Palillo
Ronald Gabriel "Ron" Palillo is an American television and film actor, perhaps best known for his role as high school student Arnold Dingfelder Horshack on the ABC sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, which aired from 1975 to 1979....
--Arnold Horshack on the 1970s TV series Welcome Back, Kotter
Welcome Back, Kotter
Welcome Back, Kotter was an American television sitcom starring Gabe Kaplan and featuring a young John Travolta.It originally aired on the ABC network from September 9, 1975 to June 8, 1979.-Premise:...
.
Wesley’s fifth book, A Fish Out of Water, is his first pre-schooler book. The story of a bird and a fish that fall in love and make it work, it is used by schools to teach racial tolerance. The graduate art students at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina illustrate it. His new book, The Whale That Ate the Storm, will soon be released.
Knightsbridge Publishing released two of his humor books, Fun with Fax and On-the-Wall Off-the-Wall Office Humor.
Other accomplishments
- Eure has starred on the stage in shows like Bus Stop, Butterflies Are Free, Love Sex and the IRS, as well as the musicals I Love My Wife and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor DreamcoatJoseph and the Amazing Technicolor DreamcoatJoseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story is based on the "coat of many colors" story of Joseph from the Hebrew Bible's Book of Genesis. This was the first Lloyd Webber and Rice musical to be performed publicly...
. Eure also starred in his own nightclub revue. - His company Games at Sea created, produced and directed on-board entertainment for cruise ships such as Crystal Cruises and Celebrity Cruise Line.
- For several years, Eure’s Blues Brothers 2000 live stage show at Universal Studios Hollywood was rated the number one tour show at the park.
- Eure is currently co-producing, with his production company Cardboard Belt Productions, a new musical titled Snapshots.
- Eure is also currently the Travel Editor for Live Magazine Palm Springs and writes a very successful travel column bi-monthly.
- For many years, Eure was the top fundraiser for the March of DimesMarch of DimesThe March of Dimes Foundation is a United States nonprofit organization that works to improve the health of mothers and babies.-Organization:...
, and has also raised money through telethons and fund-raising campaigns for groups like the Variety Club and the Special OlympicsSpecial OlympicsSpecial Olympics is the world's largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, providing year-round training and competitions to more than 3.1 million athletes in 175 countries....
. He helped start Project Angel Food, a non-profit organization that feeds homebound AIDSAIDSAcquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
patients.