Decades after typecasting pushed him out of Hollywood and into a flower shop, a DVD release handed him his fans back, and now they are saying goodbye.
The actor who played the teenage boy who needed only to shout a single word to turn into a superhero on CBS Saturday mornings has died.
Michael Gray, the star of the live-action CBS series “Shazam!,” died Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, of natural causes in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 75.
A family spokesperson announced the death. Representatives confirmed the death to Variety on Thursday, Oct. 22.
Gray played Billy Batson for three seasons on CBS, in a show that sent Billy across the country with his guardian, Mentor, played by Les Tremayne, in a motorhome, looking for injustices to resolve. He said he had never heard of Captain Marvel when he was called in to read for the part, and he won it fast. The transformation effect gave the producers more trouble: their first try, by Gray’s later recollection, was a flash device, and when the smoke cleared he was singed. That version was short-lived.
Welcomed Like a King on Set
John Davey, 87, the actor who took over the role of Captain Marvel on the show from Jackson Bostwick, paid tribute to his former co-star. “Mike was just a loving, sweet guy with a great sense of humor,” Davey said.
“From my very first day on ‘Shazam!,’ Mike and Les [Tremayne] welcomed me like a king,” he said.
Davey added: “He loved acting, loved doing the show and, in recent years, loved appearing at comic cons. He really enjoyed meeting and chatting with the fans. Mike was a wonderful man. I don’t think he ever stopped smiling.”
A Brady Boyfriend and a Student Doctor
Gray was born in Chicago on Sept. 2, 1951, grew up in Miami Beach, Fla., and later in Hollywood, and studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He made his onscreen debut in a 1969 episode of “Room 222,” then picked up guest spots on “The Flying Nun,” “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and, later, “Dynasty.”
In 1970 he played Burt Reynolds’ younger brother in the ABC telefilm “Run, Simon, Run,” and the same year he appeared in the features “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and “Myra Breckinridge.” His first series job came in 1972, as a student doctor named Ronnie Collins in the first season of NBC’s “The Little People,” opposite Brian Keith and Shelley Fabares; the show was later renamed “The Brian Keith Show.” In 1973 he turned up as Jeff, Marcia’s boyfriend, in a “The Brady Bunch” episode built around her shift at the local ice cream shop.
“Shazam!” followed, running on the CBS Saturday-morning lineup for three seasons, from September 1974 to October 1976.
Too Famous to Leave Home
Charles Laufer, the Tiger Beat publisher, managed Gray before the series and kept him in front of young audiences. “They wanted me to be the next David Cassidy,” Gray said. He landed on the covers of Tiger Beat and other teen magazines, and he said the plan worked so well that, while the show was on the air, fan magazine attention made leaving his own house a problem.
When the series ended, Gray felt typecast and walked away from acting altogether. In a 2020 interview with Ann Moses, he said he had become “terribly typecast,” which discouraged him from pursuing acting.
He went into flowers instead. Gray said in that same 2020 interview that he eventually bought the floral shop originally owned by his wife Stacy’s parents and moved it from West Hollywood to Beverly Hills. The business closed in the mid-2000s, and the couple then moved into men’s fashion retail.
The DVD That Brought Him Back
The series went largely unseen for decades until a DVD release in 2012, which triggered a career resurgence and sent Gray onto the fan convention circuit. Davey said Gray relished that circuit in his later years and loved talking with fans.
At a Comic-Con panel in 2012, Gray described the production as exhausting and thrilling at the same time, and said being part of one of the first live-action shows on Saturday morning was a draw. He said that year that people constantly approached him to say the show had carried them through childhood and shaped the adults they became. During production, he said, he had no idea of that reach.
Gray returned to acting in 2016 in the superhero comedy “Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel,” playing Will E. Bee, and stayed with the franchise through 2020. He voiced “TV’s Michael Gray,” one of Sterling Archer’s boyhood idols, in four episodes of the FX comedy “Archer” between 2015 and 2019, and he appeared on AMC’s “Comic Book Men.” In 2023 he took a brief cameo in “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” sharing a scene with Zachary Levi’s Captain Marvel as a nod to the original series. Asher Angel played Billy Batson in that film.
His wife, Stacy Benon Gray, whom he married in 1994, survives him, along with stepchildren Ryan Cooper and Laurel Cooper and son-in-law Lee Barker.