Robert Alba Keith was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, on November 14, 1921, to actor Robert Keith and stage actress Helena Shipman, a native of Aberdeen, Washington. Some sources also list his full name as Brian Robert Keith. He was Roman Catholic.

Keith made his Broadway debut in 1948 in the ensemble of Mister Roberts, which starred his father as “Doc”.

Keith married three times, first to Frances Helm; then, in 1954, to actress Judy Landon (who made a guest appearance on Family Affair); and finally, in 1970, to Hawaiian actress Victoria Young (née Leialoha), who later appeared on The Brian Keith Show as Nurse Puni.

In 1955, Keith starred in his own series, Crusader, as the fictional journalist Matt Anders. He continued to appear in films for Columbia, such as Storm Center (1956) co starring with Bette Davis and Nightfall (1956) with Aldo Ray. He guest starred on shows like The Box Brothers, Studio 57 again, The Ford Television Theatre, Climax! and Wire Service. In June 1956 he announced he had formed his own company, Michael Productions, and had optioned a story by Robert Blees called Cairo.

During the latter part of his life, Keith suffered from emphysema and lung cancer, despite having quit smoking ten years earlier. He had appeared in an endorsement campaign for Camel cigarettes in 1955. On June 24, 1997, he was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his home in Malibu, California, two months after his daughter Daisy committed suicide. It was also reported that he had financial problems and suffered from depression throughout his final days.

In 1960, he won acclaim for his starring role in Sam Peckinpah’s extremely hard-bitten, adult, and short-lived series The Westerner (1960). It went for only 13 episodes but became a cult classic. “Only four or five of those were any good”, said Keith later. “But those four or five were as good as anything anybody has ever done.”

In 1966, Keith landed the role of Uncle Bill Davis on CBS’s popular television situation comedy Family Affair. This role earned him three Emmy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. The show made him a household name. It was in the vein of such successful 1960s and 1970s sitcoms that dealt with widowhood and/or many single-parent issues as: The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons, The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Here’s Lucy, Julia, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, and Sanford And Son. During its first season in 1966, Family Affair was an immediate hit, ranking #15 in the Nielsen ratings. By the end of its fifth season, in 1971, Family Affair still had high ratings but was canceled after 138 episodes.

Family Affair ended in 1971. Keith made Scandalous John (1971) for Disney, Something Big (1972) with Dean Martin and director Andrew McLaglen, and the TV movie Second Chance (1972).

Keith went on to star as pediatrician Dr. Sean Jamison in the NBC sitcom The Brian Keith Show (also known as The Little People). The series was cancelled in 1974 after two seasons. “The show ended because it was bad not because of Hawaii”, said Keith.

Keith once again returned to series television in 1983, with Hardcastle and McCormick, in the role of a cranky retired judge named Milton C. Hardcastle. Daniel Hugh Kelly costarred as ex-con Mark McCormick in this ABC crime drama with elements of comedy. The chemistry of Keith and Kelly was a hit, and the series lasted three years until its cancellation in 1986.

Keith fathered two children with Landon (Michael and Mimi), and together they adopted three others (Barbra, Betty, and Rory). He fathered two children with Young (Bobby and Daisy). Daisy became an actress and appeared with her father in the short-lived series Heartland, in 1989.

Keith did some Westerns, The Quest (1976) pilot, and Joe Panther (1976), and the TV movie The Loneliest Runner (1976). He had a support role in Nickelodeon (1976) and did the TV movies In the Matter of Karen Ann Quinlan (1977) and The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer (1977). He was in How the West Was Won (1978), Hooper (1978) with Burt Reynolds, Centennial (1979), and The Chisholms (1979). In 1992, he starred in the unsold, ABC half-hour pilot The Streets of Beverly Hills.

Brian Keith appeared on a 2 part episode of Major Dad, Season 4 “The People’s Choice” as The Major’s (Gerald McRaney) domineering father (guest star Brian Keith) pays a visit to the family. The episode aired on September 25, 1992.

On June 26, 2008, Brian Keith received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

He starred in the TV series Archer (1975) as Lew Archer, replacing Peter Graves who’d starred in the pilot, but it was cancelled after six episodes and has never been rerun in the United States (Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the first episode of the series was released in 2018 by Lalaland Records).