The young star who turned into a caped hero with a single magic word quit acting when the show ended, feeling typecast, and spent years selling flowers instead.
The Saturday-morning teenager who needed only one shouted word to turn into a superhero has died, half a century after the role that put him on teen-magazine covers.
Michael Gray, the actor who starred as Billy Batson on the live-action CBS series “Shazam!,” died Friday, Oct. 16, 2026, of natural causes in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 75.
A family spokesperson announced the death. Representatives confirmed it to Variety on Thursday, Oct. 22.
“Welcomed Me Like a King”
John Davey, 87, the actor who took over the role of Captain Marvel on the show from Jackson Bostwick, remembered his co-star in a tribute to Variety.
“Mike was just a loving, sweet guy with a great sense of humor,” Davey said. “From my very first day on ‘Shazam!,’ Mike and Les [Tremayne] welcomed me like a king.”
“He loved acting, loved doing the show and, in recent years, loved appearing at comic cons,” Davey added. “He really enjoyed meeting and chatting with the fans. Mike was a wonderful man. I don’t think he ever stopped smiling.”
The Flash Effect That Singed Him
“Shazam!” ran three seasons in the CBS Saturday-morning lineup, from September 1974 to October 1976. Billy crossed the country in a motorhome with his guardian, Mentor, played by Les Tremayne, looking for injustices to resolve.
Gray said he had never heard of Captain Marvel when he was called in to read for Billy, and he won the part fast. The transformation effect gave the producers more trouble. Their first attempt used a flash device, Gray recalled later; when the smoke cleared, he was singed, and that version did not last long.
Gray was born in Chicago on Sept. 2, 1951, and was raised in Miami Beach, Fla., and then Hollywood. He studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse and made his onscreen debut in a 1969 episode of “Room 222,” followed by guest spots on “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 the same year he appeared in the features “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” and “Myra Breckinridge.” His first series job came 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 show was later renamed “The Brian Keith Show.” In 1973 he turned up on “The Brady Bunch” as Jeff, Marcia’s boyfriend, in an episode built around her shift at the local ice cream shop.
The Next David Cassidy
Before the series, Gray’s manager was Tiger Beat publisher Charles Laufer, who kept him in front of young audiences. “They wanted me to be the next David Cassidy,” Gray said of the plan.
It worked. Gray landed on covers of Tiger Beat and other teen magazines, and he said the strategy succeeded so well that, while the show was on the air, fan magazine attention made leaving his own house a problem.
After “Shazam!” ended, Gray felt typecast and walked away from acting altogether. In a 2020 interview with Ann Moses, he said he had become “terribly typecast,” which discouraged him from pursuing acting.
He went into flowers instead. The shop originally belonged to the parents of his wife, Stacy, and Gray eventually bought it, moving the business from West Hollywood to Beverly Hills, he told Moses. The floral business closed in the mid-2000s, and the couple moved into men’s fashion retail.
A DVD Release Brought Him Back
The series went largely unseen for decades until a DVD release in 2012, which triggered a career resurgence and sent Gray onto the fan convention circuit.
At a Comic-Con panel that year, Gray described the production as exhausting and thrilling at the same time, and said part of his draw was being part of one of the first live-action shows on Saturday morning. People approached him constantly, he said in 2012, to tell him the show carried them through childhood and shaped the adults they became. During production, he said, he had no idea of that reach.
Gray returned to acting in 2016 in the superhero comedy “Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel,” playing Will E. Bee, and stayed with the franchise through 2020. He voiced “TV’s Michael Gray,” one of Sterling Archer’s boyhood idols, in four episodes of the FX comedy “Archer” between 2015 and 2019, and he appeared on AMC’s “Comic Book Men.”
In 2023 he made a brief cameo in “Shazam! Fury of the Gods,” sharing a scene with Zachary Levi’s Captain Marvel as a nod to the original series. Asher Angel played Billy Batson in the film.
Gray’s wife, Stacy Benon Gray, whom he married in 1994, survives him, along with stepchildren Ryan Cooper and Laurel Cooper and son-in-law Lee Barker.