All a teenage boy named Billy Batson had to do was shout one word to become a superhero, and the actor who shouted it for three seasons on CBS has died.
Michael Gray, who starred as Billy in the live-action series “Shazam!,” died Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, of natural causes. He was 75. His representatives announced the death Thursday, Oct. 22.
“Mike was just a loving, sweet guy with a great sense of humor,” said John Davey, the actor who took over the role of Captain Marvel on the show from Jackson Bostwick. Davey, 87, said Gray relished the comic convention circuit in his later years, where he would spend his time talking with fans.
From Marcia’s Boyfriend to Billy Batson
Born in Chicago on Sept. 2, 1951, Gray grew up in Miami Beach, Fla., then headed for Hollywood and studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse. He made his onscreen debut on a 1969 episode of “Room 222,” and the guest spots followed quickly — “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 that same year he turned up in the features “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and “Myra Breckinridge.” His first series job arrived 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 sitcom was later renamed “The Brian Keith Show.” In 1973 he played Jeff, Marcia’s boyfriend, in a “The Brady Bunch” episode built around her shift at the local ice cream shop.
Then came the magic word. “Shazam!” ran on CBS as part of the network’s Saturday-morning lineup for three seasons, from September 1974 to October 1976, with Billy crossing the country alongside his guardian, Mentor, played by Les Tremayne, in a motorhome, looking for injustices to resolve. Gray said he had never heard of Captain Marvel when he was called in to read for Billy. He got the part fast.
The transformation itself took some trial and error. Producers first tried a flash device, Gray later recalled, and when the smoke cleared he was singed. That version did not last long.
They Wanted the Next David Cassidy
Before the series came along, Gray’s manager — Tiger Beat publisher Charles Laufer — was already keeping him in front of young audiences. The covers piled up, in Tiger Beat and other teen magazines, and the plan was not subtle.
“They wanted me to be the next David Cassidy,” Gray said. It worked, he said — so well that while the show was on the air, the fan magazine attention made leaving his own house a problem.
Feeling typecast once “Shazam!” ended, Gray walked away from acting altogether. He took work in children’s theater education, spent time in men’s fashion, and owned and operated a West Hollywood floral business with his wife, Stacy.
The DVD That Pulled Him Back
The series sat largely unseen for decades until it was released on DVD in 2012, which touched off a career resurgence and sent Gray onto the fan convention circuit. At a Comic-Con panel that year, he 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 had been a draw.
He returned to acting in 2016 with the superhero comedy “Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel,” playing Will E. Bee in the franchise through 2020. He voiced “TV’s Michael Gray,” one of Sterling Archer’s boyhood idols, on four episodes of the FX comedy “Archer” between 2015 and 2019, and he appeared on AMC’s “Comic Book Men.”
In 2023 he stepped in front of the camera for “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” a brief cameo in which he shared a scene with Zachary Levi’s Captain Marvel as a nod to the original series. Asher Angel played Billy Batson in the film.
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.
Gray said in 2012 that people approached him constantly to say the show had carried them through childhood and shaped the adults they became. He had no idea, he said, that it had reached anyone that way while he was making it.
