Dick Hammer attended Southern Cal, where he was a starting guard on the basketball team, graduating in 1954. In the 1950s he was director of recreation for the city of Long Beach when he elected to take a firefighter test. He passed that test and spent a career as a firefighter, retiring as a Captain in 1983. Hammer also moonlighted in film work, doing over 100 different television commercials, and played the role of Captain Dick Hammer, a firefighter, in the television show “Emergency,” but left after part of the first season to return to real-life firefighting. From 1970-80 he was the Marlboro Man for the famous cigarette advertisement. Hammer’s grandson, Sam Darnold, became the starting quarterback for Southern Cal in 2016-18.
United States