Ken Howard was a veteran American actor who had a decades-long career in films, plays, and series. A talented basketball player in his early days, he later ditched sports scholarships to focus on academics but eventually abandoned his studies at Yale to step into acting with a Broadway play. Howard shot to fame with his role of basketball coach Ken Reeves in the long-running series The White Shadow. He also won an Emmy Award for the telefilm Grey Gardens, a Daytime Emmy Award for the CBS special The Body Human: Facts for Boys, and a Tony Award for the drama Child’s Play. Howard was also an inspiring union leader and had led the actors’ union SAG as its last president and the SAG-AFTRA as its first national president. Howard had also taught acting at Harvard and had later penned a book based on his lectures. He had married thrice and divorced twice.
