The teen idol behind Billy Batson left Hollywood for a flower shop, then spent his final years meeting the kids who grew up shouting his magic word.
For three seasons of CBS Saturday mornings, Michael Gray needed only one word to turn a teenager into a superhero.
Gray, the actor who played Billy Batson on the live-action DC Comics series “Shazam!,” died of natural causes on Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, at 75, according to his representatives. His publicist announced the death Thursday, Oct. 22.
Gray’s Billy was a teenager who crossed the country with his guardian, Mentor, played by Les Tremayne, the two of them riding in a 1973 Dodge Open Road motorhome and stopping wherever they found an injustice to untangle. When the trouble grew too big for a boy, Billy shouted the show’s title and Captain Marvel took his place — played first by Jackson Bostwick, then by John Davey.
The series ran on CBS for three seasons, from September 1974 to October 1976, and landed as one of the first live-action shows on Saturday morning, a slot then dominated by cartoons.
The Flash Effect That Singed Him
Gray said he had never read the comic when producers cast him, so he learned the character on the run. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, he recalled that the crew first tried a flash device to sell Billy’s transformation, and that the smoke cleared to reveal an actor who had been lightly burned. The effect was dropped in a hurry.
They Wanted the Next David Cassidy
Gray’s manager was Tiger Beat publisher Charles Laufer, and the strategy was not subtle. “They wanted me to be the next David Cassidy,” Gray once said. He landed on the magazine’s cover again and again, and he recalled that the fan-magazine frenzy during the show’s run made it hard for him to leave his own house.
Born in Chicago on Sept. 2, 1951, Gray grew up in Miami Beach, Fla., then moved to Los Angeles and studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He made his onscreen debut on a 1969 episode of “Room 222” and turned up on “The Flying Nun” and “Marcus Welby, M.D.” His first series job came in 1972 as student doctor Ronnie Collins on the first season of the NBC sitcom “The Little People,” which starred Brian Keith and Shelley Fabares and ran through 1974.
A year later, he picked up the credit that still draws recognition from viewers who never watched a superhero show: Jeff, Marcia’s boyfriend, in a 1973 episode of “The Brady Bunch” built around her job at the local ice cream shop. He also played Burt Reynolds’ younger brother in the 1970 ABC telefilm “Run, Simon, Run,” appeared in the 1970 features “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and “Myra Breckinridge,” and later guested on “Dynasty.”
From Typecast Teen Idol to Florist
The idol machinery eventually boxed him in. Convinced he was being typecast, Gray quit acting and left Hollywood altogether. He taught in children’s theater education, worked in men’s fashion, and ran a West Hollywood floral business with his wife, Stacy — a second act that lasted until a box set pulled him back.
The DVD That Brought Him Back
“Shazam!” was remastered and released on DVD in 2012, and the show that had sat unseen for decades suddenly had an audience again. Gray spoke on a Comic-Con panel that year and became a fixture at fan conventions, where, he told Fanboy Planet in 2012, strangers kept telling him the series had helped them through childhood.
The work followed. From 2015 to 2019 he voiced “TV’s Michael Gray,” one of Sterling Archer’s boyhood idols, on four episodes of the FX comedy “Archer.” He played Will E. Bee in the “Surge of Power” film franchise from 2016 to 2020 and appeared on AMC’s “Comic Book Men.” In 2023, he turned up in “Shazam! Fury of the Gods” for a cameo opposite Zachary Levi, who starred as the modern Captain Marvel — a wink across five decades at the kids who once shouted the word at their television sets.
Davey, who took over as Captain Marvel midway through the run, said Gray loved acting, loved the show and relished meeting fans at comic conventions in recent years. “I don’t think he ever stopped smiling,” Davey said.
Gray is survived by his wife, Stacy Benon Gray, whom he married in 1994; his stepchildren, Ryan Cooper and Laurel Cooper; and his son-in-law, Lee Barker.
