From the L.A. Times:
Ed Kemmer, who played the heroic, steel-jawed Cmdr. Buzz Corry on the popular 1950s children’s science-fiction television program “Space Patrol” and later was a regular on numerous TV soap operas, has died. He was 84. Television was still a novelty when “Space Patrol” debuted on March 9, 1950, as a 15-minute show that aired live five days a week on Channel 7 in Los Angeles. It was one of a trio of pre-Sputnik-era children’s “space operas” that included “Captain Video” and “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet.” By the summer of 1950, a radio version of “Space Patrol” was also airing on the ABC radio network. By the end of the year, a weekly half-hour “Space Patrol” was being broadcast live on the ABC television network, where it ran until 1955. “Space Patrol!” the announcer dramatically intoned at the start of each episode. “High adventure in the wild reaches of space … missions of daring in the name of interplanetary justice. Travel into the future with Buzz Corry … commander in chief of … the Space Patrol.”
Born Edward Kemmerer in Reading, Pa., Kemmer was flying a P-51 in 1944 when he was shot down over German-occupied France on his 29th mission. Captured, he was placed among 2,500 British officers in a POW camp in Germany. He later managed an escape but was recaptured. After “Space Patrol,” Kemmer broke the heroic mold by playing villains in episodes of “Perry Mason,” “Gunsmoke” and “Maverick.” In the early 1960s, he played a Cape Canaveral flight engineer on the live soap opera “Clear Horizons” on CBS. After appearing on more prime-time series, he moved to New York in 1964 and spent the next 19 years as a regular on “The Edge of Night,” “As the World Turns,” “All My Children,” “Guiding Light” and other soaps.