For other people with a similar name, see William Daily
Bill Daily is an American comedian and dramatic actor, and a veteran of many
television sitcoms. He is best known for playing astronaut Roger Healey on I
Dream of Jeannie and commercial airline navigator Howard Borden on The Bob
Newhart Show. Early life and career
Daily's father died when Bill was young, and he was raised by his mother and
other family members. In 1939, Daily and his family moved to Chicago, where he
spent the rest of his youth. Upon leaving Lane Technical High School,
Daily left home to try to carve out a life as a musician, playing bass with
jazz bands in numerous clubs across the Midwest.
Daily was drafted into the United States Army and served in the Korean War with
an artillery unit, later being transferred to an entertainment unit.
It was in his traveling-musician days that Daily began performing stand-up and
gradually began playing some of the bigger clubs in the [country. After
graduating from the Goodman Theatre School, Daily worked for the NBC
television station in Chicago, WMAQ, as an announcer and floor manager. He
eventually became a staff director. Daily stated that preparing for a
Chicago-area Emmy Award telecast, he asked a young Bob Newhart to come up
with a routine about press agents which resulted in the routine "Abe Lincoln vs.
Madison Avenue". Television roles
Daily played guest spots on My Mother the Car, The Farmer's Daughter and
Bewitched. Veteran sitcom writer Sidney Sheldon noticed Daily and hired him for
a supporting role on I Dream of Jeannie. The part on Jeannie was that of a United
States Army test pilot, Roger Healey, best friend of Larry Hagman's Tony
Nelson. While Daily enjoyed his work on Jeannie, Hagman decidedly did not. Daily
was witness to multiple Hagman tantrums on the set, but he and Barbara Eden
stood behind Hagman, citing a substance problem and the progressively poorer
scripts on Jeannie as the source of Hagman's fits.
In 1972, two years after Jeannie was canceled, Daily was back at work and
back in another aviator's uniform, in what is perhaps his signature role:
Howard Borden in The Bob Newhart Show. Borden, a commercial-airline navigator
who later became a co-pilot, lived across the hall from Bob Newhart's Bob
Hartley character, and would frequently pop into the Hartleys' apartment to
borrow things, mooch a meal, or have the Hartleys take care of his son when he
had custody of him. Daily would also occasionally serve as a
panelist on the 1970s CBS game show The Match Game. After Richard Dawson's
departure, Daily was a semi-regular for the final three years of the show's CBS
and syndicated run. For the two years that followed The Bob
Newhart Show, Daily returned to stand-up, but in 1980, after years of
making a living as a second banana, Daily was offered his own show. Called
Small & Frye, the show featured Daily as a neurotic doctor; it lasted only three
months before being canceled. In 1988, Daily tried his hand again at starring
roles, this time as another doctor on the sitcom Starting From Scratch. It
fared only mildly better than Frye, and was canceled after one season. Daily's
most notable post-Newhart role was another supporting one, that of Larry
the psychiatrist on the cult favorite ALF; Jack Riley appeared as one of his
patients, unnamed but clearly reprising Elliot Carlin from The Bob Newhart Show.
ALF also claimed to have learned all he knew about psychology from watching the
earlier series. During the 1980s–1990s, Daily reprised
his I Dream of Jeannie role of Roger Healey in two made-for-TV reunion
movies: I Dream of Jeannie... Fifteen Years Later and I Still Dream of
Jeannie. In 1990, he reunited with Bob Newhart as a new, overbearing neighbor
in the Newhart episode "Good Neighbor Sam". Also in 1991, he reprised the role
of Howard Borden in The Bob Newhart Show: 19th Anniversary, which aired in
February of that year. In 1997, he was a guest star on Caroline in the City.
In 1987, he was named director of the New Mexico Film Commission.
Personal life Daily married his first wife, Patricia
Anderson, in 1949. In 1976, the couple divorced. Daily has two adopted
children, a son, Patrick, and a daughter, Kimberley. His son is a key
grip and stunt pilot in Hollywood, and his daughter is a retired teacher in
Colorado. In 1980 he married Vivian Sanchez, with whom he traveled on the
road performing Lover's Leap for two years, and with whom he had one child,
Becca. He later divorced Sanchez. In 1993, he married Becky Daily. The
couple remained together until her death in 2010. Though retired, he still does
some comedy and the occasional TV guest appearances. From 2006 to February 2009,
he was a guest host on radio station KBQI, 107.9, in Albuquerque, on Thursday
mornings. See also
Biography portal References
Notes External links
Bill Daily at the Internet Movie Database
Bill Daily interview video at the Archive of American Television