(written from a Production point of view)
John Anderson (20 October 1922 – 7 August 1992; age 69) was the actor who played the role of Kevin Uxbridge in the Star Trek: The Next Generation third season episode "The Survivors". Anderson also had a recurring role on MacGyver, and is remembered for several roles on The Twilight Zone, including the airline pilot on the ill-fated "Odyssey of Flight 33". He also guested on Gene Roddenberry's The Lieutenant.
Anderson was born in Clayton, Illinois. He bore a strong resemblance to Abraham Lincoln and portrayed him in two separate projects. Anderson also had a small role as the friendly car salesman in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. His "The Survivors" co-star Anne Haney later played the sheriff's wife in the Gus Van Sant remake. In 1983, he had a guest appearance on M*A*S*H alongside David Ogden Stiers. In 1992, he had a guest role in an episode of Quantum Leap, starring Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell and with Kenneth Tigar. He and Bakula had also previously acted together in the 1986 TV Movie I-Man. Anderson and Marianna Hill appeared in the Perry Mason episode "The Case of the Greek Goddess". In 1987, Anderson had a small role in the TV movie Race Against the Harvest A.K.A. American Harvest alongside Matt McCoy, Randal Patrick, and John Pyper-Ferguson. Anderson portrayed baseball commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis in Eight Men Out (1988) based on the Chicago Black Sox Scandal of the 1919 World Series. Anderson worked alongside Gordon Clapp, Christopher Lloyd, Richard Lynch, James Read, and Kevin Tighe. Anderson also played the father of Jonathan Frakes' character in the 1985 miniseries North and South. Anderson starred in the 1991 television movie In Broad Daylight alongside Robert Schenkkan, Bill Bolender, and Elizabeth Dennehy's father Brian Dennehy.
Anderson once played the role of Mr. Pike, a grieving widower obsessed with a music box in memory of his late wife in an episode of Little House on the Prairie (1975).
Anderson died of a heart attack two and a half months before his seventieth birthday on 7 August 1992 at his home in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles. [1]