Thirty years have passed since the sad death of actor John Baily. He was best known for his part as Happy Days drummer “Sticks” Downey.
Baily was the only African American regular performer on the show, and he only showed up twice as Richie Cunningham’s drummer, played by Ron Howard. But the actor made an impression that will never go away.
Bailey was also known for his role as C.C. McNamara on the 1970s TV show Wonderbug with Sid and Marty Krofft. His other TV roles were in M*A*S*H and Good Times.
He also played a role in The Kentucky Fried Movie, a movie that came out in 1977. Changed careers in the 1980s, went by the name Jack Baker, and made adult movies. This is his story.
A Deep Look
His middle name was “Anthony.” He was born on June 4, 1947, in Cleveland, Ohio. Bailey lived in San Francisco in the 1970s. He went to Merritt College in Oakland and was in a number of plays, TV shows, and movies.
His stage work included Richard Wesley’s “The Black Terror” for John Cochran’s “Black Repertory West,” J. E. Franklin’s “Black Girl” with Adilah Barnes, and shows with The Pitschel Players, an improvisational theater group, and other theater groups in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bailey was also in the Sun Ra movie Space Is the Place, which came out in 1974 after being made in 1972. In the same period of time, Baily was cast as “Sticks” Downey in the Happy Days episode “Fonzie’s New Friend.”
After his role as C.C. McNamera on TV’s Wonderbug, he made one more appearance on the show and was given the name John-Anthony Bailey while working on that project.
In the 1980s, Bailey started making a lot of adult movies as “Jack Baker,” but he stopped acting in explicit scenes in those movies. In that business, he was known as a “non-sex” actor, and most of his roles were comedic and made fun of racial stereotypes.
He was married and had two kids when he was not acting. The disease killed him in 1994, when he was only 47 years old.
As an aside, and sadly, Happy Days never had another African American main character after John Baily (his name at the time) left the show.
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