2012 – Bob Purvey at the Malibu Lagoon restoration project
BIOGRAPHY
Fishing in the Red Sea in Egypt at age four.
Robert Anthony “Bob” Purvey was born in Cairo, Egypt, to a Greek mother and a British father. The Purvey family’s primary language was French, and the secondary languages were English, Greek, and Arabic.
“On the weekends, we’d visit my grandparents at their country house outside of Alexandria. Driving back and forth between Cairo and Alexandria, my father would have me read the English roadside billboards out loud, while he would teach me to enunciate the words properly.”
Not only was Bob bright, at age three, but his father also discovered Bob was physically coordinated when he placed a tennis racket and tennis ball in Bob’s hands. Bob started by hitting the ball against the back wall of the internationally famous Gezira Sporting Club tennis arena, where King Farouk had built the tennis arena for the new Jack Kramer professional tennis world tour. Kramer and Bob’s father were good friends and played regularly there.
On April 29, 1954, the family had to leave Egypt. The communist revolutionary party, led by Abdul Nasser and his military regime, deposed King Farouk and kicked all Europeans out of the country with just two suitcases each. The once affluent family of four moved to London, England, where Purvey and his elder sister, Joan, attended boarding school for the following year.
On March 18, 1955, the Purvey family arrived in Manhattan, New York, and moved into the Manhattan Hotel for the next six months.
While trying to sort out their new lifestyle, the family moved to Jamaica, Queens, where seven-year-old Purvey entered grade school at PS #50. “I joined the neighborhood gang, wore a Jelly-Roll, white t-shirt with rolled-up sleeves, jeans with rolled-up cuffs, a Garrison belt, and biker boots. I was Marlon Brando in disguise, with a zip gun I made tucked in my pants. I was smoking cigarettes and pursuing girls by age ten.”
In 1961, the family moved to Westwood Village in West Los Angeles, California, where Purvey was enrolled in Emerson Junior High School. “When I was first taken on a tour of the campus, I was told to “Strip for the gym.” I didn’t know what it meant exactly, but it sounded fun.”
When summer came, his sister took 13-year-old Purvey to the Santa Monica Pier, where he was introduced to surfing. He caught his first wave and stood up, riding it all the way in and onto the sand, where he stepped off the board to the applause from his sister and her friends. His father gave Bob his first surfboard as a Christmas present.
The “Red Jackets” AKA Dewey Weber Competition Team. Purvey standing on the right.
Purvey entered his first surfing contest, the Santa Monica Mid-winter Championships, within a year. He won his first heat and got the attention of surfing icon Dewey Weber. Soon after, Dewey invited Purvey to join his prestigious competition team (AKA The Red Jackets).
Purvey climbed the ranks of the United States Surfing Association, competing in the Junior Men’s division as an amateur while learning how to design surfboards. Surfing was the trend and It was at the height of surfing’s cultural movement. He was passionate about surfing, but there was no significant money in the sport at that time. So, he subsidized surfing by working part-time at Duke’s 76 Union gas station in Westwood Village as a gas station attendant.
“Eighteen year old Bob Purvey, dark-horse winner of the nose-riding crown,” Competition Surf magazine, 1966.
By 1965, Purvey had gained notoriety and wished to become a professional surfer. He wanted his own “Bob Purvey” signature model, but Dewey declined Purvey’s ambitious request. Consequently, Purvey joined the Ernie Tanaka Surfboards competition team. Tanaka made Purvey’s signature model, a noserider style design that Purvey had been working on since being mentored by Dewey. Unfortunately, Tanaka’s marketing campaign was under-financed, and it failed to produce any royalties, despite Purvey’s growing fame. Six months later came an offer from Con Surfboards of Santa Monica, with an ambitious marketing campaign and a written contract. In 1966, at age eighteen, as the principal designer of “The Ugly” surfboard model, Bob Purvey won the noseriding division of one of the first professional contests in the sport’s history: The Morey-Pope Professional Invitational Championships. His noteriety and resonating brand of The Ugly was supposed to raise Purvey’s financial status. However, Con cheated Purvey and withheld Purvey’s royalties, breaching their written contract. After three years, Purvey sued Con and won, but because of this strugle Purvey became disenchanted with promoting surfing, and stopped competing in 1968.
Publicity and advertisements gave him international acclaim as a champion surfer.
The Ugly Surfboard became the best selling surfboard in the world in 1967, according to Surfing Magazine, and was advertised in all the surfing magazines exclusively associating The Ugly and Super Ugly noseriders with Purvey and his surfing skills. Purvey continued to compete as a world-class champion, promoting what everyone considered to be his brand. However, Purvey was torn between promoting the highly successful Con manufactured Ugly boards and advertising campaign that associated Purvey exclusively with the Ugly brands, while Con withheld the royalties from sales and moving to another manufacturer. By 1968, he decided to end his relationship with Con after realizing Con would not pay him his well-deserved royalties.
On one sunny Sunday when the waves were small, and Purvey had lttle to do, he decided to give his VW van camper an oil change at the gas station where he worked. It so happened that Don Lewis, a production photographer for Urie Productions in Hollywood, stopped by to gas up. He noticed the handsome young lad. He approached Purvey and asked if he wanted to be in a TV commercial for Chrysler. Purvey was suspiscious and asked, “Is there any money in it?” Lewis stated that there was a potential to make a lot of money with little effort. And, so started an alternative career in film and TV. Lewis introduced Purvey to Mary Ellen White, a theatrical agent who signed Purvey to a representation contract.
Good looks, television commercials, magazine ads, and notoriety as a “world-class surfer” led to theatrical film and television roles, as well as modeling for many top brands. Also, he got many opportunities to date beautiful women. In 1967, he was introduced to filmmaking as a principal champion surfer in a surf movie called “Follow Me,” a full-length surfing odyssey that took place in many exotic surfing locations around the world. It was produced by Robert E. Peterson Productions and released through Cinerama in 1968. Made with a skeleton crew, Purvey worked in various capacities, from surfboard cameraman to location hunting.
The transition from professional surfer to professional actor came quickly. Purvey became an international model appearing in magazine advertisements and TV commercials for major brands such as Hallmark, BMW motorcycles, and many more. He was challenged by acting in film and TV over the next decade. His first significant role was in the title role as “The Rebel” in a 1970 episode of Mission: Impossible. Most notable is Purvey’s principal role as “Flip” in the 1977 Emmy nominated CBS pilot, Winners: I Can. He was a series regular as “Rhett Saxton” in the soap opera Lovers and Friends (NBC, 1977), a semi-regular in General Hospital (ABC, 1985-89 and 2008), and had featured roles in A-Team, Rich Man – Poor Man and Young and the Restless, among others. National television commercial appearances (on-camera) include the one-and-only Atari’s Pac Man, Hallmark Card’s “Coming Home” (CLIO award), and the 1st Chevrolet Celebrity commercial, among others.
In 1979, he returned to competing as a surfer and won his first contest. In 1980, Purvey became an entrepreneur, co-operating the Graphlite surf shop at Topanga Beach in Malibu. In 1986, he innovated and produced the Malibu Classic Challenge, which demonstrated all the surfing skills in the sport. In 1992, he became a Malibu environmentalist and award-winning community access producer of television
PUBLICITY
documentaries, educating the community and general public about the polluted waters at the world-famous Malibu Surfrider Beach, his home surf spot, and what could be done to solve the many problems. Recently, he performed in minor roles on the soap’s General Hospital and The Bold and the Beautiful. He was the narrator in the award-winning documentary, In Search of the California Condor. He won the 2009 International Wildlife Film Festival Merit Award for his co-editing skills.
In 2010, he formed the nonprofit EcoMalibu @ecomalibu.org to educate the general public about restoring the historical wetland environment in the heart of Malibu. In 2012, the Malibu Lagoon restoration was completed and had matured, with wildlife returning that hadn’t been seen in decades, and the water quality has vastly improved. He’s producing an innovative professional surf contest, and plans can be seen at www.MalibuNoseRiding.com. The Ugly surfboards now has his signature on the label and sell online at UglyBoards.com. Ugly garb, accessories, boards and art are sold at TheUglyShoppe.com.
