A MAN WHO'S DONE PLENTY GIVES BACK VETERAN ACTOR DONATES HIS HOUSE.

Byline: EUGENE TONG Staff Writer

STUDIO CITY -- Stage and screen veteran Al Checco is giving it all away -- even the kitchen sink.

The 84-year-old actor, who counted Don Knotts and Burgess Meredith as his performing peers, is donating his 1940s-era, three-bedroom home to benefit Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, where the acute rehabilitation department has been renamed after him and his late wife, Jean Bradley.

``I've done as well as I could as a supporting player,'' Checco said in an interview last week at his Coldwater Canyon home. ``She'll be glad to know that I've done that for her.''

A Broadway actress and singer, Bradley was just 28 when she died of polio in Milan during a 1955 European tour of ``Oklahoma!'' The couple had been married only two years, and Checco never remarried.

``Jean died just as her career was taking off,'' he said. ``She died just before she was scheduled to sing the songs for Deborah Kerr in the movie version of `The King and I.'''

He also was repaying a debt to the hospital, where the self-described ``bionic'' man underwent multiple cardiac bypass and pacemaker surgeries, given a history of heart disease in his family.

``It became like a second home,'' he quipped.

Patrice Hallak, the hospital's director of neurosciences and rehabilitation, said the facility was deeply moved by Checco's gift.

``The money is going to allow us to purchase new technologies to help patients recover from disabling injuries or disease,'' she said.

Checco was born 1922 in Pittsburgh, and worked more than 60 years in show business, appearing in such Broadway shows as ``Damn Yankees'' and in film and television including ``Bullitt'' and as the Penguin's henchman Dove in TV's ``Batman.''

He studied drama for two years at the Carnegie Mellon University -- then Carnegie Institute of Technology -- before he was swept into World War II.

Though an actor, Checco was assigned to the Army Engineering Corps, likely because of where he studied. But he had more in common with those serving in the Army Special Service Division, which produced films for the war effort.

Hanging out with them paid off when he scored an audition at the Pentagon with legendary Broadway maestro J.J. Shubert.

``I sang a cappella without a piano,'' he recalled. ``Shubert said, `It was good enough for me.'''

Checco won a gig with Army Detachment X, a song and comedy troupe charged with entertaining frontline troops in the South Pacific, often under enemy fire.

``I played the sad sack,'' he said. ``I bombed every night.''

Also in the unit was future comedy legend Don Knotts, who died in February. His autographed head shot, inscribed ``May our paths continue to cross,'' hung in Checco's study.

``He was in the show with me -- all 101 pounds of him,'' Checco said. ``He played the pinup girl.''

Two and a half years and 1,260 performances later, Checco was discharged. He settled in New York and worked the Great White Way. That's where he met Jean, in the summer of 1953 in a production of ``Rosalinda.''

``She was the leading lady,'' he said. ``I just thought she was so gorgeous.''

Asked about her first impression of him, Checco quipped: ``He's an Italian guy living with his mother.''

The couple became inseparable; when they married several months later, they agreed never to accept jobs alone.

``She really was an understanding woman,'' he said. ``A monsignor said to me after she died, it sounded like a marriage made in heaven.''

But during the 1955 European tour of ``Oklahoma!'', a cultural exchange sponsored by Rodgers and Hammerstein and the U.S. Department of State, Bradley succumbed to polio.

``She told me, `I want you to promise me in case something happened to me, you'd get married again,' Checco recalled. ``That's a ridiculous request. But after a couple of times, I said yes.

``I still feel guilty.''

Still, Checco lived to perform, and the theater posters, production stills and autographed photos on the walls throughout his home are a testament to a lifetime in show business.

``I've been an old man all my life,'' he said. ``I've always had responsibility.'' That included caring for his mother. ``I took jobs that I shouldn't have to meet my obligations. In a way, it did hurt my career, but if I were a bricklayer, I had laid a lot of bricks.''

He also invested in rental properties in Los Angeles, which he donated in the 1990s to his alma mater; when he couldn't afford tuition in his freshman year, school officials tapped the local community to help make payments.

Now, his Studio City home is the only thing he has left to give. Under the deal with the hospital's foundation, Checco will live there till his last day before they take ownership.

``I'm giving back to the people who gave to me,'' he said. ``It's doing something for Jean.''

eugene.tong(at)dailynews.com

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CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Veteran actor Al Checco has donated his Studio City house to Burbank's Providence Saint Joseph Medical Centerr in honor of his late wife, Jean Bradley, who died of polio in 1955.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer

(2) A photograph from about 1953 shows Al Checco and his wife, Jean Bradley, who later died of polio in 1955. The couple met on a production of ``Rosalinda,'' in which Bradley was leading lady.