Mike Henry (American football)

Michael Dennis "Mike" Henry (born August 15, 1936 in Los Angeles, California) is a former American football linebacker and actor.

Football career
Henry's football career as a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers (1958–1961) and the Los Angeles Rams (1962–1964) led him to be noticed by Warner Bros.

Acting career
His most prominent role was as Tarzan in three 1960s movies, Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), Tarzan and the Great River (1967), and Tarzan and the Jungle Boy (1968), that were all filmed back-to-back in 1965. Henry turned down the lead of the subsequent Tarzan television series, which then went to actor Ron Ely.

Henry is also best known to movie audiences for playing Jackie Gleason's dim-witted son "Junior" in the Smokey and the Bandit films opposite Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, after portraying a corrupt prison guard (opposite Reynolds) in The Longest Yard. Another football-playing role was as one of the members of the gang who kidnap "Larry Bronco" (Larry Csonka) in an episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man". Henry also portrayed "Sergeant Kowalski" in The Green Berets, corrupt sheriff "Blue Tom" Hendricks in Rio Lobo, and "Lt. Col. Donald Penobscot" in an episode of the television series M*A*S*H.

Later life
After contracting Parkinson's disease, he retired from acting.