Jason Evers, 83; Actor Known for ‘The Brain That Wouldn’t Die’

Jason Evers, 83, an actor remembered for the 1963 cult film “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” died of heart failure March 13 in Los Angeles.

The native New Yorker grew up seeing 25 to 30 plays a year thanks to his ticket-broker father. He dropped out of school to join the Army during World War II and later went into acting through repertory companies.

Evers, sometimes billed under his birth name Herb Evers, burst onto the Hollywood scene in 1960 in the western television series “Wrangler” and the motion picture “Pretty Boy Floyd.” In “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die,” he was cast in the lead role of Dr. Bill Corter, a surgeon seeking a body for his fiancee’s decapitated head.

Evers played an English professor in the 1963-64 ABC series “Channing,” set at a mythical university, and the elusive missing son James to Walter Brennan’s Will on ABC’s “The Guns of Will Sonnet.” A popular guest on TV series through the 1980s, Evers made his last film appearance in 1990’s “Basket Case 2.”