Biography
Robert Houston Broyles (20 January 1933 – 12 February 2011) was an American character actor, drama teacher, theatre director and writer. Born in Sparta, Tennessee, he served in the US Navy from 1952 to 1956 and graduated from Ohio State University in 1960. He worked as a drama coach in Hollywood from 1963 to 1967 before making his first television appearance in 1964 on an episode of Bonanza.
Broyles appeared in numerous television series in the 1960s and 1970s, including multiple episodes of My Three Sons, The Mod Squad and Family Affair. His film roles included Dirty Tricks #3 in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Sam Bolen in Norma Rae (1979), Willis in Raise the Titanic (1980) and a pool worker in Poltergeist (1982). He continued working in television and film into the 1990s, with his final role in the series Bette in 2000. He died in Los Angeles aged 78.
