Gordon Gebert

Gordon Gebert (born Gordon Alan Gebert Jr. on 1941-10-17) is an American former child actor who transitioned into a distinguished career as an architect and professor. He was born in Des Moines, Iowa, the son of Gordon and Violette Gebert, and spent his early childhood in the Midwest before his family relocated to Van Nuys, California in 1948, a move that placed him at the heart of the burgeoning Hollywood film industry. At the tender age of seven, Gebert was cast as the son of Janet Leigh in the classic romance Holiday Affair (1949), launching a brief yet memorable acting career that spanned the early 1950s. Over the next decade he appeared in nine feature films, including the film‑noir classics The Narrow Margin and The House on Telegraph Hill, and contributed to a handful of short films and television episodes such as The Donna Reed Show and Bachelor Father. His final screen appearance was in a Christian youth scare film, after which he retired from acting in 1960 to pursue academic ambitions. After completing his secondary education at Van Nuys High School, Gebert enrolled at UCLA before transferring to USC, and ultimately earned a bachelor's degree in architecture from MIT in 1966 followed by a master's from Princeton in 1968. Since 1971 he has served on the faculty of the City College of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture, rising to Acting Dean of Architecture from 2015 to 2019 and maintaining licensure in New York State since 1973. Gebert’s personal life includes two marriages: first to Phyllis A. DeReamer in 1973, with whom he had two daughters, and later to Lizabeth Paravisini‑Gebert in 1988, a professor of Hispanic Studies at Vassar College, with whom he shares a son. Today he resides in Manhattan, where he continues to influence architectural education while occasionally contributing scholarly articles on urban information systems and technology.