John Beck

American actor John Beck first stepped on a high school stage to overcome his acute shyness. He found he enjoyed the sensation, and left the Midwest for California, working first in commercials, then as a guest actor on various TV series, starting with James Garner's Nichols (1971). After his film bow in Burt Lancaster's Lawman (1971), Beck was cast as Erno, the handsome futuristic rebel leader with "capped gums," in Woody Allen's Sleeper (1973). But it was television which kept Beck the busiest, from 1980s TV weeklies like Hotel, Murder She Wrote and Jake and the Fatman to a two-year run (1991-92) as Judge David Raymond on the NBC daytime drama Santa Barbara. John Beck's "dream" TV role turned out to be just that -- a dream. For it was he who played Pamela Ewing's (Victoria Principal) husband on Dallas during the series' notorious 1985-86 season, which was explained away at the beginning of the next season as entirely a figment of Pamela's imagination. ~ Hal Erickson Full Biography »