- Michael Gray, who played Billy Batson on the CBS Saturday-morning series Shazam!, died on Friday, October 16, 2026, in Palm Desert, California. He was 75.
- His publicist said he died of natural causes, and his representatives shared the news with People on Thursday, October 22. No funeral plans have been announced.
- Born in Chicago on September 2, 1951, Gray was a Tiger Beat cover boy who also dated Marcia on The Brady Bunch, then walked away from acting and spent years running a flower shop.
For three seasons in the mid-1970s, a lot of us started our Saturdays the same way. A teenager in a motor home rolled across the country with his guardian, Mentor, and when trouble showed up, he shouted one word and a man in a red suit took his place. That teenager was Michael Gray, and his publicist told TMZ that he died of natural causes on October 16 in Palm Desert, California, after his health had failed. He was 75.
Gray is survived by his wife of 32 years, Stacy Benon Gray, his stepchildren Ryan and Laurel Cooper, and his son-in-law Lee Barker, according to TVLine. The story of how a teen idol ended up arranging flowers in West Hollywood, and how the fans pulled him back decades later, is one he told with a good deal of humor. There is also one quiet detail about the date of his death that longtime Shazam! viewers will recognize.
How Did a Chicago Kid Become TV’s Billy Batson?
Gray was born in Chicago and grew up in Miami Beach, and he came west to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, according to People and Soap Central. His manager was Charles Laufer, the publisher of Tiger Beat, which goes a long way toward explaining all those magazine covers. Small parts on Room 222, The Flying Nun and Marcus Welby, M.D. led to his first real break in 1972, when he was cast as student doctor Ronnie Collins on NBC’s The Little People, later retitled The Brian Keith Show.
Brady fans know him from one more stop along the way. In the 1973 episode “Marcia Gets Creamed,” Marcia takes a job at an ice cream parlor and talks her boss into hiring Peter, mostly so she will have more free time for her boyfriend. That boyfriend, Jeff, was Michael Gray.
Then came the call that defined his career. “I got a call from my agent that a Saturday morning TV show called Shazam! was casting,” he told AMC in 2018. He admitted at a Comic-Con panel that he walked in cold. “I didn’t know the character or the story when I was initially cast, so I had to be a quick study,” he said, as People and Hello! both reported.
Shazam! premiered on CBS on September 7, 1974, as Filmation’s first live-action series. Billy and Mentor, played by the late Les Tremayne, drove a motor home from town to town helping kids out of jams, and each episode closed with a lesson. Jackson Bostwick wore the cape as Captain Marvel at first, and John Davey took over early in the second season. From 1975, the show was paired with The Secrets of Isis as The Shazam!/Isis Hour, and Isis herself, JoAnna Cameron, crossed over into three Shazam! episodes. Cameron died in October 2021.
The special effects were simple, and Gray learned that the hard way. “I remember when we were experimenting with the change from Billy to Captain Marvel, using a sort of flash device,” he told Comic Book Resources in 2012, recalling that the flash singed him. “That definitely didn’t work,” he said, as People reported. Gray took the show’s values seriously. “Shazam! had a moral value to it, and tried to teach kids right from wrong and to accept people for who they are,” he told AMC.
Davey, now 87, shared a statement after his co-star’s death. “From my very first day on Shazam!, Mike and Les welcomed me like a king,” he said, according to The A.V. Club and People. “Mike was just a loving, sweet guy with a great sense of humor.” That warmth was real, but it did not keep Gray in Hollywood once the cameras stopped rolling.
Why Did He Walk Away From Acting?
After Shazam! ended, Gray felt typecast, and the pressure of being a teen idol wore on him, according to People and KCRG. So he stepped back. He worked in children’s theater education and in men’s fashion, and with his wife he ran a florist shop in West Hollywood that closed in the mid-2000s. “I had odd jobs here and there, and then I found a lady, got married and ran a flower shop for many years,” he told Comic Book Resources, as KCRG reported. Eventually the long hours caught up with him. “After too many hours working and not enough money, I quit that too,” he said. He took a job at a men’s clothing store, and he was content there. “It’s a job, and I enjoy it.”
What changed everything was a 2012 DVD remaster of Shazam!, which sent him out on the convention circuit. “I was blown away when I walked into that room,” he told AMC about facing his first Comic-Con crowd. He kept going back. He voiced a version of himself billed as “TV’s Michael Gray” in four episodes of FX’s Archer, voiced a role in 2016’s Surge of Power: Revenge of the Sequel, and turned up on AMC’s Comic Book Men. In 2023, he made a cameo in Shazam! Fury of the Gods, wearing a red-and-yellow shirt in a nod to his old role.
What Did the Fans Finally Tell Him?
The conventions gave Gray something he never got in the 1970s, which was a chance to hear from the kids who had been watching. “I didn’t know how much I would like [the role] until years later, when I found out how much of an influence my character was, and the show was, in people’s lives,” he told Fanboy Planet in 2012. Strangers kept stopping him with the same words. “You have no idea what you did for me as a child. You helped me get through life,” he recalled them saying, according to The A.V. Club. “I didn’t know the show had that much strength and power back then.”
And then there is the date. The final episode of Shazam! aired on CBS on October 16, 1976, according to the show’s broadcast records. Michael Gray died on October 16, 2026, fifty years to the day after Billy Batson last said the magic word on Saturday morning television. Davey summed up the man best. “Mike was a wonderful man,” he said. “I don’t think he ever stopped smiling.”