|  When
New Hampshire residents see Don Galloway's photo next to his weekly
column in the Manchester Union Leader, the face may look familiar.
That's not surprising; many readers saw him perform as Detective Sergeant
Ed Brown on the hit TV show Ironside. Or maybe they remember
him as Buzz Stryker from his stint on the daytime soap opera General
Hospital.
Either way, the face may be a little older, but the square-jawed profile
that earned Galloway parts in more than two dozen movies and on uncounted
TV shows remains the same. It's the opinions expressed in the column
that may surprise some: Galloway is an unabashed libertarian.
A graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Kentucky, Galloway got
his start in show business in 1962 in an off-Broadway production of
Bring Me a Warm Body. He appeared in a number of lesser-known
television shows -- The Secret Storm (1962), Arrest and
Trial (1963), and Tom, Dick and Mary (1964) -- before
hitting it big in Ironside (1967-1975) and General Hospital
(1985-1987).
Galloway also appeared in dozens of moves, some famous (The Big
Chill, 1983), some cult favorites (Two Moon Junction,
1988), and some obscure (Ski Lift to Death, 1978). In addition,
he made guest appearances on a slew of television shows, including Dallas,
Murder She Wrote, MacGyver, Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, CHiPs, Charlie's
Angels, and Wagon Train. In 1979, he was co-host of The
Guinness Game. Of course, he was back again with Raymond Burr and
the rest of the cast in The Return of Ironside, a 1993 made-for-TV
movie.
After he retired from the acting business, Galloway settled in New Hampshire.
As a columnist for the state's largest newspaper, he gets a weekly opportunity
to remind readers, as he warned in an interview on an Ironside
fan website (www.geocities.com/Broadway/Balcony/3129/Galloway/DonGalloway1.html),
that Americans are "forgetting about freedom." Here are some
examples from his Union Leader column...
• On obscenity: "If the FCC wants to ferret
out obscenity, it should spend a day in the United States Congress."
(February 20, 2004)
• On the benefits of seceding: "The Republic
of New Hampshire [could eliminate] the tyrannical, unnecessary taxes
and regulations imposed upon it by the dolts of Washington, DC."
(March 12, 2004)
• On interpreting the constitution: "In
New Hampshire, the Senate has decided by a rather narrow margin that
our constitution actually means what it says. It's all about whether
you can carry a gun if you want to, and the constitution says you
absolutely can. The bill now goes to the House, where they will decide
whether the constitution actually means what it says." (February
27, 2004)
• On taxes: "We all remember the horrors
of slavery. The Internal Revenue Service reminds us of it each April
15th, and sometimes more often." (February 13, 2004)
Today, Galloway works on a corporate training team as a consultant specializing
in public speaking. He also teaches acting seminars.
-- Bill Winter |
