Personal Life
Davis was born and raised in Aurora, Missouri. He earned a B.S. degree in theater and art from Southwest Missouri State College. He said that "during the Viet Nam era" he "was with the 7th Infantry in Korea" and at another point was "a personnel and administration officer; I ran records branches." He was a captain at Fort Leonard Wood by the time he left the military, " and worked with General Officers, so I've been able to use that in Hammond and other characters."
In 1970 he received a Master's Degree in Theatre from the Southern Illinois University Carbondale with a thesis entitled Design and Construction of Stage Settings for Black Comedy and The Two Executioners. He taught for several years before returning to SIU to complete a Ph.D. in Theatre, with a dissertation entitled The Evolution of Scenography in the Western Theater. He began working in the film industry in the 1980s, while teaching at the University of British Columbia. In 1987 he stopped teaching in order to pursue acting full-time.
Davis was also a visual artist, spending most of his free time painting or carving. Davis grew up painting, sculpting and drawing. He continued to pursue these crafts his entire life, supplementing his income with design commissions and art sales. On the DVD commentary track for Stargate SG-1 season 6 episode 17 ("Disclosure"), Davis said he once worked carving wooden cigar store Indians that were sold at Silver Dollar City. He also said his PhD is in "dramatic theory and criticism."
Davis married Ruby Fleming in 2003, by which time he had a son from previous marriage. Davis, who was living in Gibsons, British Columbia, died on June 29, 2008 of a heart attack. The writers of Stargate Atlantis paid him homage by mentioning the death of his character in the same manner, and naming a starship after him, in the final episode of Stargate: Atlantis, which aired on January 9, 2009. He was again honored in October 2009, with the appearance of the starship Hammond in the pilot episode of Stargate Universe. Coincidentally, in episode 16 of season 4 of SG-1, "2010" (which originally aired in January 2001), it is stated that Gen. Hammond had died of a heart attack.
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