An accomplished designer and real estate developer, his achievements include construction and restoration of hotels, high-rises and 18th century mansions.
Attended Columbia University, where he took architecture courses as an undergraduate. This education has come in handy in his second career as a real estate developer and builder.
Davis first attracted attention on TV in the late 1960s playing multiple characters on the daytime gothic soap opera "Dark Shadows" (1966).
Davis is credited with "And Introducing Roger Davis as Stephen Foster Moody" in the opening credits of The Young Country (1970) (TV), the original of two pilots for "Alias Smith and Jones" (1971). The credit was unusual as Davis had been appearing regularly on television (as well as in movies) for eight years, including recurring roles on two TV series in the early 1960s, and had been a regular on the popular day-time soap "Dark Shadows" (1966) for the previous two years. The pilot, which was featured as a TV Movie of the Week on ABC, co-starred Davis' friend Pete Duel. ABC rejected the pilot and the producers went back to the drawing boards, replacing Davis with Ben Murphy in a revised concept for a series that paid homage to the movie blockbuster Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Known for his voice-over work, Davis was given the narrator of "Alias Smith and Jones" in the first season and a-half, eventually taking over for Duel as "Joshua Smuth" after
Davis played Robert E. Lee Prewitt in the 1966 pilot for "From Here to Eternity" (1980), which was not picked up. The TV movie made as the pilot from James Jones's classic novel has never been seen on American television. Thirteen years later, "From Here to Eternity (1953)" -- the big screen adaptation of which had won the Oscar as Best Picture of 1953 -- made it to the small screen as a TV movie and was picked up as a series for the 1980 season.
He replaced Pete Duel as Hannibal Heyes on the TV series "Alias Smith and Jones" (1971) following Duel's suicide in December 1971. George Peppard was also in the running for the part of Hannibal Heyes.
In 1971, he narrated the title sequence voice-over for the comedy western TV series "Alias Smith and Jones" (1971), starring Pete Duel as "Hannibal Heyes/Joshua Smith" and Ben Murphy as "Kid Curry/Thaddeus Jones". Roger also guest-starred in one of the episodes ("Alias Smith and Jones: Smiler with a Gun (#2.4)" (1971)) as gunfighter "Danny Bilson". His Bilson character has the distinction of being the only character Kid Curry was driven to kill during the series. When star Pete Duel committed suicide during the Christmas holiday season of 1971, Davis replaced him as Hannibal Heyes. However, after Davis completed just seventeen episodes, the series was canceled the next season in 1973.
In July 2006, he and his "Alias Smith and Jones" (1971) costar, Ben Murphy, were guests at the Western Film Fair in Charlotte, North Carolina along with Marjorie Lord, Mark Goddard, Steve Kanaly, Ronnie Schell, Coleen Gray, Russ Tamblyn, Tom Reese, and Cheryl Rogers.
Owns an interest in movie developer Lonetree Entertainment in Los Angeles.
Roger Davis appeared as the lead in the first "Alias Smith and Jones" (1971) pilot, which was televised as an ABC Movie of the Week, under the title, "The Young Country (1970) (TV). His co-star was his friend, Pete Duel, a Universal Studios contract player who was cast as the second lead. The pilot was not picked up, but ABC did pick up the second "Alias Smith and Jones" pilot, that paid homage to the smash hit Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), starring Duel as a character inspired by Paul Newman's Butch Cassidy. Davis was replaced by Universal Studios contract player Ben Murphy, with Universal pushing Murphy for the role as he resembled Newman. A successful voice-over artiste as well as actor, Davis narrated the opening of each "Alias Smith and Jones" episode with Duel & Murphy and appeared as an actor in one episode, "Alias Smith an