Putting together your own Magnificent Seven
You have been tasked with saving your small Mexican village from an evil gang and must recruit seven of the greatest film Cowboys to protect and save your people. From this group of western stars (from the silent film era to the present), where do you start? Which is the most "Magnificent" of your seven?
Discuss here: http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000088/flat/232604422
Note: Members of the cast of The Magnificent Seven (Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughnn, Steve McQueen, etc.) are excluded from this list... as they have already busy saving a different village.
Discuss here: http://www.imdb.com/board/bd0000088/flat/232604422
Note: Members of the cast of The Magnificent Seven (Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughnn, Steve McQueen, etc.) are excluded from this list... as they have already busy saving a different village.
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John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Iowa, to Mary Alberta (Brown) and Clyde Leonard Morrison, a pharmacist. He was of English, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and Irish ancestry.
Clyde developed a lung condition that required him to move his family from Iowa to the warmer climate of southern California, where they tried ranching in the Mojave Desert. Until the ranch failed, Marion and his younger brother Robert E. Morrison swam in an irrigation ditch and rode a horse to school. When the ranch failed, the family moved to Glendale, California, where Marion delivered medicines for his father, sold newspapers and had an Airedale dog named "Duke" (the source of his own nickname). He did well at school both academically and in football. When he narrowly failed admission to Annapolis he went to USC on a football scholarship 1925-7. Tom Mix got him a summer job as a prop man in exchange for football tickets. On the set he became close friends with director John Ford for whom, among others, he began doing bit parts, some billed as John Wayne. His first featured film was Men Without Women (1930). After more than 70 low-budget westerns and adventures, mostly routine, Wayne's career was stuck in a rut until Ford cast him in Stagecoach (1939), the movie that made him a star. He appeared in nearly 250 movies, many of epic proportions. From 1942-43 he was in a radio series, "The Three Sheets to the Wind", and in 1944 he helped found the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a Conservative political organization, later becoming its President. His conservative political stance was also reflected in The Alamo (1960), which he produced, directed and starred in. His patriotic stand was enshrined in The Green Berets (1968) which he co-directed and starred in. Over the years Wayne was beset with health problems. In September 1964 he had a cancerous left lung removed; in 1977 when Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope was being made, John Waynes archive voice was used for the character Garindan ezz Zavor, later in March 1978 there was heart valve replacement surgery; and in January 1979 his stomach was removed. He received the Best Actor nomination for Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and finally got the Oscar for his role as one-eyed Rooster Cogburn in True Grit (1969). A Congressional Gold Medal was struck in his honor in 1979. He is perhaps best remembered for his parts in Ford's cavalry trilogy - Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950).- Actor
- Producer
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Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took interest in music and mechanics, but was an otherwise bored student; this resulted in being held back a grade. In 1949, the year he is said to have graduated from high school, his parents and younger sister Jeanne moved to Seattle. Clint spent a couple years in the Pacific Northwest himself, operating log broncs in Springfield, Oregon, with summer gigs life-guarding in Renton, Washington. Returning to California in 1951, he did a two-year stint at Fort Ord Military Reservation and later enrolled at L.A. City College, but dropped out to pursue acting.
During the mid-1950s he landed uncredited bit parts in such B-films as Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula (1955) while digging swimming pools and driving a garbage truck to supplement his income. In 1958, he landed his first consequential acting role in the long-running TV show Rawhide (1959) with Eric Fleming. Although only a secondary player the first seven seasons, he was promoted to series star when Fleming departed--both literally and figuratively--in its final year, along the way becoming a recognizable face to television viewers around the country.
Eastwood's big-screen breakthrough came as The Man with No Name in Sergio Leone's trilogy of excellent spaghetti westerns: A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). The movies were shown exclusively in Italy during their respective copyright years with Enrico Maria Salerno providing the voice of Eastwood's character, finally getting American distribution in 1967-68. As the last film racked up respectable grosses, Eastwood, 37, rose from a barely registering actor to sought-after commodity in just a matter of months. Again a success was the late-blooming star's first U.S.-made western, Hang 'Em High (1968). He followed that up with the lead role in Coogan's Bluff (1968) (the loose inspiration for the TV series McCloud (1970)), before playing second fiddle to Richard Burton in the World War II epic Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Lee Marvin in the bizarre musical Paint Your Wagon (1969). In Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970) and Kelly's Heroes (1970), Eastwood leaned in an experimental direction by combining tough-guy action with offbeat humor.
1971 proved to be his busiest year in film. He starred as a sleazy Union soldier in The Beguiled (1971) to critical acclaim, and made his directorial debut with the classic erotic thriller Play Misty for Me (1971). His role as the hard edge police inspector in Dirty Harry (1971), meanwhile, boosted him to cultural icon status and helped popularize the loose-cannon cop genre. Eastwood put out a steady stream of entertaining movies thereafter: the westerns Joe Kidd (1972), High Plains Drifter (1973) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) (his first of six onscreen collaborations with then live-in love Sondra Locke), the Dirty Harry sequels Magnum Force (1973) and The Enforcer (1976), the action-packed road adventures Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Gauntlet (1977), and the prison film Escape from Alcatraz (1979). He branched out into the comedy genre in 1978 with Every Which Way But Loose (1978), which became the biggest hit of his career up to that time; taking inflation into account, it still is. In short, The Eiger Sanction (1975) notwithstanding, the 1970s were nonstop success for Eastwood.
Eastwood kicked off the 1980s with Any Which Way You Can (1980), the blockbuster sequel to Every Which Way but Loose. The fourth Dirty Harry film, Sudden Impact (1983), was the highest-grossing film of the franchise and spawned his trademark catchphrase: "Make my day." He also starred in Bronco Billy (1980), Firefox (1982), Tightrope (1984), City Heat (1984), Pale Rider (1985) and Heartbreak Ridge (1986), all of which were solid hits, with Honkytonk Man (1982) being his only commercial failure of the period. In 1988, he did his fifth and final Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool (1988). Although it was a success overall, it did not have the box office punch the previous films had. About this time, with outright bombs like Pink Cadillac (1989) and The Rookie (1990), it seemed Eastwood's star was declining as it never had before. He then started taking on low-key projects, directing Bird (1988), a biopic of Charlie Parker that earned him a Golden Globe, and starring in and directing White Hunter Black Heart (1990), an uneven, loose biopic of John Huston (both films had a limited release).
Eastwood bounced back big time with his dark western Unforgiven (1992), which garnered the then 62-year-old his first ever Academy Award nomination (Best Actor), and an Oscar win for Best Director. Churning out a quick follow-up hit, he took on the secret service in In the Line of Fire (1993), then accepted second billing for the first time since 1970 in the interesting but poorly received A Perfect World (1993) with Kevin Costner. Next was a love story, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), where Eastwood surprised audiences with a sensitive performance alongside none other than Meryl Streep. But it soon became apparent he was going backwards after his brief revival. Subsequent films were credible, but nothing really stuck out. Absolute Power (1997) and Space Cowboys (2000) did well enough, while True Crime (1999) and Blood Work (2002) were received badly, as was Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997), which he directed but didn't appear in.
Eastwood surprised again in the mid-2000s, returning to the top of the A-list with Million Dollar Baby (2004). Also starring Hilary Swank and Morgan Freeman, the hugely successful drama won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood. He scored his second Best Actor nomination, too. His next starring vehicle, Gran Torino (2008), earned almost $30 million in its opening weekend and was his highest grosser unadjusted for inflation. 2012 saw him in a rare lighthearted movie, Trouble with the Curve (2012), as well as a reality show, Mrs. Eastwood & Company (2012).
Between acting jobs, he chalked up an impressive list of credits behind the camera. He directed Mystic River (2003) (in which Sean Penn and Tim Robbins gave Oscar-winning performances), Flags of Our Fathers (2006), Letters from Iwo Jima (2006) (nominated for the Best Picture Oscar), Changeling (2008) (a vehicle for Angelina Jolie), Invictus (2009) (again with Freeman), Hereafter (2010), J. Edgar (2011), Jersey Boys (2014), American Sniper (2014) (2014's top box office champ), Sully (2016) (starring Tom Hanks as hero pilot Chesley Sullenberger) and The 15:17 to Paris (2018). Back on screens after a considerable absence, he played an unlikely drug courier in The Mule (2018), which reached the top of the box office with a nine-figure gross, then directed Richard Jewell (2019). At age 91, Eastwood made history as the oldest actor to star above the title in a movie with the release of Cry Macho (2021).
Away from the limelight, Eastwood has led an aberrant existence and is described by biographer Patrick McGilligan as a cunning manipulator of the media. His convoluted slew of partners and children are now somewhat factually acknowledged, but for the first three decades of his celebrity, his personal life was kept top secret, and several of his families were left out of the official narrative. The actor refuses to disclose his exact number of offspring even to this day. He had a longtime relationship with similarly abstruse co-star Locke (who died aged 74 in 2018, though for her entire public life she masqueraded about being younger), and has fathered at least eight children by at least six different women in an unending string of liaisons, many of which overlapped. He has been married only twice, however, with a mere three of his progeny coming from those unions.
His known children are: Laurie Murray (b. 1954), whose mother is unidentified; Kimber Eastwood (b. 1964) with stuntwoman Roxanne Tunis; Kyle Eastwood (b. 1968) and Alison Eastwood (b. 1972) with his first ex-wife, Margaret Neville Johnson; Scott Eastwood (b. 1986) and Kathryn Eastwood (b. 1988) with stewardess Jacelyn Reeves; Francesca Eastwood (b. 1993) with actress Frances Fisher; and Morgan Eastwood (b. 1996) with his second ex-wife, Dina Eastwood. The entire time that he lived with Locke she was legally married to sculptor Gordon Anderson.
Eastwood has real estate holdings in Bel-Air, La Quinta, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Cassel (in remote northern California), Idaho's Sun Valley and Kihei, Hawaii.- Actor
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Clayton Moore grew up in Chicago, Illinois and although his father wanted him to become a doctor, he had visions of something a little more glamorous. Naturally athletic, he practiced gymnastics during family summer vacations in Canada, eventually joining the trapeze act The Flying Behrs at 19. During the 1934 Chicago World's Fair, Clayton performed in the position of catcher. Playing off his good looks, he was signed by the John Robert Powers modeling agency and enjoyed a print career in NY for several years. But a friend urged him to make the move to Hollywood in 1938 where he entered films as a bit player and stuntman. In 1940, at the suggestion of his agent Edward Small, he changed his first name from Jack to Clayton. Beginning with Perils of Nyoka (1942), he eventually became King of the Serials at Republic Studios appearing in more than cliffhanger star Buster Crabbe. During this period, he also worked in many B westerns earning his acting chops alongside Roy Rogers, Gene Autry and interestingly Jay Silverheels. Later in 1942 he entered the military, was stationed in Kingman, Arizona and assigned entertainment duties including the production of training films. While in Arizona, he asked his future wife Sally Allen to marry him; she said "yes" and joined him in Kingman for the balance of his enlistment. After the war, he returned to these supporting roles while concentrating on westerns. His turn as Ghost of Zorro (1949) came to the attention of the radio's hugely successful Lone Ranger producer George W. Trendle who was casting the lead role for the new television series. After the interview, Trendle said, "Mr. Moore would you like the role of the Lone Ranger?" Moore replied, "Mr. Trendle, I AM The Lone Ranger." The premiere episode appeared on ABC on September 15, 1949, and was the first western specifically written for the new medium. Although Moore's voice was a natural baritone, Trendle insisted he sound more like the radio actor Brace Beemer, so Moore worked with a voice coach to mimic both the speech pattern and tone. He starred in television's The Lone Ranger from 1949-1952 and 1953-1957. Along with William Boyd ("Hopalong Cassidy"), Moore was one of the most popular TV western stars of the era. Because of a salary dispute, he was replaced by John Hart, for one season. It was during his time away from the TV show that Moore returned to the big screen (as Clay Moore) to continue his movie career with such memorable movies as Radar Men from the Moon (1952) and Jungle Drums of Africa (1953). where he co-starred with Phyllis Coates, TVs first "Lois Lane". Hired back to the series, at a higher salary, Moore remained as The Lone Ranger until the series ended in 1957, after 169 episodes. He appeared in two color big-screen movie continuations of that character, in The Lone Ranger (1956) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958). After a lifetime of "B" movie parts, Clayton Moore finally found success in a TV series and continued to make commercials and personal appearances as "The Lone Ranger" for the next three decades. The commercials for Jeno's Pizza Rolls and Aqua Velva have become legendary in their own right. At his appearances, he recited The Lone Ranger Creed, which he deeply believed in, and that image was never tarnished by the types of personal scandals that often affected other stars. In 1978 Jack Wrather (the Wrather Corp}, which owned the series and the rights to the title character, obtained a court order to stop Moore from appearing in public as "The Lone Ranger". The company planned to film a new big-screen movie of the popular hero and did not want the public to confuse its new star with the old one. It would be the only screen appearance for Klinton Spilsbury, this "new Lone Ranger". Although the former "Arrow" shirt model appeared rugged and handsome in the "unmasked" sequence, his voice projected so poorly it was overdubbed by the more melodious voice of James Keach. The film was one of the biggest flops of the 1980s and The Lone Ranger story wasn't attempted again until 30 years later with Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp as Tonto. Again, however, the film flopped without a nod to the original tenets of the integrity of the character. After Jack Wrather died in 1984, his widow actress Bonita Granville dismissed the lawsuit allowing Moore to continue to appear as the masked man. Moore's legacy to the entertainment industry and western film genre has been cemented with the installation of his legendary mask in the Smithsonian, his star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and a United States Postage Stamp bearing his image alongside Silver.- Actor
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Roy Rogers (born Leonard Slye) moved to California in 1930, aged 18. He played in such musical groups as The Hollywood Hillbillies, Rocky Mountaineers, Texas Outlaws, and his own group, the International Cowboys. In 1934 he formed a group with Bob Nolan called Sons of the Pioneers. While in that group he was known as Leonard Slye, then Dick Weston. Their songs included "Cool Water" and "Tumbling Tumbleweeds". They first appeared in the western Rhythm on the Range (1936), starring Bing Crosby and Martha Raye. In 1936 he appeared as a bandit opposite Gene Autry in "The Old Coral". In 1937 Rogers went solo from "The Sons Of The Pioneeres", and made his first starring film in 1938, Under Western Stars (1938). He made almost 100 films. The Roy Rogers Show (1951) ran on NBC from October 1951 through 1957 and on CBS from 1961 to September 1964. In 1955, 67 of his feature films were released to television.- Actor
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Legendary actor Glenn Ford was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford in Sainte-Christine-d'Auvergne, Quebec, Canada, to Hannah Wood (Mitchell) and Newton Ford, a railroad executive. His family moved to Santa Monica, California when he was eight years old. His acting career began with plays at high school, followed by acting in West Coast, a traveling theater company.
Ford was discovered in 1939 by Tom Moore, a talent scout for 20th Century Fox. He subsequently signed a contract with Columbia Pictures the same year. Ford's contract with Columbia marked a significant departure in that studio's successful business model. Columbia's boss, Harry Cohn, had spent decades observing other studios'-most notably Warner Brothers-troubles with their contract stars and had built his poverty-row studio around their loan-outs. Basically, major studios would use Columbia as a penalty box for unruly behavior-usually salary demands or work refusals. The cunning Cohn usually assigned these stars (his little studio could not normally afford then) into pictures, and the studio's status rose immensely as the 1930s progressed. Understandably, Cohn had long resisted developing his own stable of contract stars (he'd first hired Peter Lorre in 1934 but didn't know what to do with him) but had relented in the late 1930s, first adding Rosalind Russell, then signing Ford and fellow newcomer William Holden. Cohn reasoned that the two prospects could be used interchangeably, should one become troublesome. Although often competing for the same parts, Ford and Holden became good friends. Their careers would roughly parallel each other through the 1940s, until Holden became a superstar through his remarkable association with director Billy Wilder in the 1950s.
Ford made his official debut in Fox's Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939), and continued working in various small roles throughout the 1940s until his movie career was interrupted to join the Marines in World War II. Ford continued his military career in the Naval Reserve well into the Vietnam War, achieving the rank of captain. In 1943 Ford married legendary tap dancer Eleanor Powell, and had one son, Peter Ford. Like many actors returning to Hollywood after the war (including James Stewart and Holden (who had already acquired a serious alcohol problem), he found it initially difficult to regain his career momentum. He was able to resume his movie career with the help of Bette Davis, who gave him his first postwar break in the 1946 movie A Stolen Life (1946). However, it was not until his acclaimed performance in a 1946 classic film noir, Gilda (1946), with Rita Hayworth, that he became a major star and one of the the most popular actors of his time. He scored big with the film noir classics The Big Heat (1953) and Blackboard Jungle (1955), and was usually been cast as a calm and collected everyday-hero, showing courage under pressure. Ford continued to make many notable films during his prestigious 50-year movie career, but he is best known for his fine westerns such as 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Rounders (1965). Ford pulled a hugely entertaining turn in The Sheepman (1958) and many more fine films. In the 1970s, Ford made his television debut in the controversial The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970) and appeared in two fondly remembered television series: Cade's County (1971) and The Family Holvak (1975). During the 1980s and 1990s, Ford limited his appearance to documentaries and occasional films, including a nice cameo in Superman (1978).
Glenn Ford is remembered fondly by his fans for his more than 100 excellent films and his charismatic silver screen presence.- Actor
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The son of a lumberman, Tom Mix joined the army as a young man and was an artillery sergeant during the Philippine campaign from 1898 to 1901, though he never saw action. In fact, Mix deserted from the army and carefully kept the facts about his military service a closely guarded secret. About 1903 he was drum major with the Oklahoma Cavalry Band, playing in the St. Louis World's Fair. In 1904 he was a bartender and sheriff/marshal in Dewey, Oklahoma. He was in a series of Wild West shows, such as The Miller Bros. Wild West Show, from 1906-1909; the Widerman show in Amarillo, Texas; with wife Olive Mix in Seattle's Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition; and Will A. Dickey's Circle D Ranch. The latter supplied Selig Pictures with cowboys and Indians for movies and, in 1910, Mix was hired by Selig to provide and handle horses. His first movie was Ranch Life in the Great Southwest (1910). He continued with Selig until 1917, writing and directing as well as acting. He was signed by Fox Films in 1917 and remained with them until 1928, averaging five or so films a year. His popularity eclipsed all other great cowboy stars (Hoot Gibson and even the legendary William S. Hart) of the silent era and he earned--and spent--millions.
In addition to Mix's riding and shooting skills, the films also showcased the talents of his amazing horse, Tony the Horse. Sound and encroaching middle age were not favorable to Mix, and after making a handful of pictures during the sound era he left the film industry after 1935's serial, The Miracle Rider (1935) (a huge hit for lowly Mascot Pictures, grossing over $1 million; Mix earned $40,000), touring with the Sells Floto Circus in 1930 and 1931 and the Tom Mix Circus from 1936 to 1938. While Mix was a great showman, the combination of the Depression and the high overhead of his traveling shows conspired against his success. Mix developed a comical style, emphasizing fast action thrills to a greater extent than had been common in earlier westerns, and he did his own stunts. He was king of the cowboys during the 1920s and remained popular on radio and in comic books for more than a decade after his death. He died in an auto accident in 1940.- Actor
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Handsome American leading man who developed into one of Hollywood's greatest and most popular Western stars. Born to George and Lucy Crane Scott during a visit to Virginia, Scott was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina in a wealthy family. After service with the U.S. Army in France in World War I, he attended Georgia Institute of Technology but, after being injured playing football, transferred to the University of North Carolina, from which he graduated with a degree in textile engineering and manufacturing. He discovered acting and went to California, where he met Howard Hughes, who obtained an audition for him for Cecil B. DeMille's Dynamite (1929), a role which went instead to Joel McCrea. He was hired to coach Gary Cooper in a Virginia dialect for The Virginian (1929) and played a bit part in the film. Paramount scouts saw him in a play and offered him a contract. He met Cary Grant, another Paramount contract player, on the set of Hot Saturday (1932) and the pair soon moved in together. Their on-and-off living arrangement would last until 1942. Scott married and divorced wealthy heiress Marion DuPont in the late 1930's. He moved into leading roles at Paramount, although his easy-going charm was not enough to indicate the tremendous success that would come to him later. He was a pleasant figure in comedies, dramas and the occasional adventure, but it was not until he began focusing on Westerns in the late 1940s that he reached his greatest stardom. His screen persona altered into that of a stoic, craggy, and uncompromising figure, a tough, hard-bitten man seemingly unconnected to the light comedy lead he had been in the 1930s. He became one of the top box office stars of the 1950s and, in the Westerns of Budd Boetticher especially, a critically important figure in the Western as an art form. Following a critically acclaimed, less-heroic-than-usual role in one of the classics of the genre, Ride the High Country (1962), Scott retired from films. A multimillionaire as a result of canny investments, Scott spent his remaining years playing golf and avoiding film industry affairs, stating that he didn't like publicity. He died in 1987 survived by his second wife, Patricia Stillman, and his two adopted children, Christopher and Sandra. He is buried in Charlotte, North Carolina.- Music Artist
- Actor
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After high school Gene Autry worked as a laborer for the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad in Oklahoma. Next he was a telegrapher. In 1928 he began singing on a local radio station, and three years later he had his own show and was making his first recordings. Three years after that he made his film debut in Ken Maynard's In Old Santa Fe (1934) and starred in a 13-part serial the following year for Mascot Pictures, The Phantom Empire (1935). The next year he signed a contract with Republic Pictures and began making westerns. Autry--for better or worse--pretty much ushered in the era of the "singing cowboy" westerns of the 1930s and 1940s (in spite of the presence in his oaters of automobiles, radios and airplanes). These films often grossed ten times their average $50,000 production costs. During World War II he enlisted in the US Army and was assigned as a flight officer from 1942-46 with the Air Transport Command. After his military service he returned to making movies, this time with Columbia Pictures, and finally with his own company, Flying A Productions, which, during the 1950s, produced his TV series The Gene Autry Show (1950), The Adventures of Champion (1955), and Annie Oakley (1954). He wrote over 200 songs. A savvy businessman, he retired from acting in the early 1960s and became a multi-millionaire from his investments in hotels, real estate, radio stations and the California Angels professional baseball team.- Actor
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He looked so much like superstar Humphrey Bogart that character actress Sarah Padden asked if the two were related. LaRue said he didn't think so. After a long pause studying the young actor's face, she asked, "Did your mother ever meet Humphrey Bogart?"
Alfred "Lash" LaRue was born in Louisiana (although some records indicate Michigan). His father was a traveling salesman, and young Alfred spent his formative years moving all across the country. His family finally settled in Los Angeles where he attended St. John's Military Academy and began college at College of the Pacific, intending to study law. At some point he took an acting class there in an attempt to overcome a speech impediment. After college he followed his father into sales and became a real estate agent. Unsatisfied, he switched to hairdressing before falling into acting. In 1945 he was interviewed by veteran low-budget producer / director Robert Emmett Tansey, who was looking for a bullwhip-cracking anti-hero to co-star in a production at lowly Producers Releasing Corporation (PRC). That studio had been around since 1940, rising out of the ashes of Ben Judell's failed dream, and had quickly earned a reputation--entirely justified--of being the worst studio among the denizens of "Poverty Row", that grouping of cheap jack independent producers and ultra-low-budget production companies which composed the bottom rung of the Hollywood food chain, at least since the days of equally shoddy Syndicate Pictures a decade before. LaRue, with his remarkable resemblance to Bogart, certainly looked the part and was cast after claiming he had worked a bullwhip since childhood. In fact he had never handled one, so after he was cast he ran out and borrowed a whip. He spent the next several days trying to learn to use it, but wound up beating himself senseless and bloody, and was finally forced to admit to Tansey that he didn't know what he was doing. Impressed by LaRue's sincerity and laughing at his injuries, Tansey arranged for personalized bullwhip instruction, a rather lavish expense for penny-pinching PRC. Al had appeared in a handful of walk-on roles at Universal, but after realistically gauging his chances at becoming a star at a major studio, he decided it was better to be a bigger fish in a small pond (or, in PRC's case, a mud puddle). His PRC debut, Song of Old Wyoming (1945), headlined singing cowboy Eddie Dean and co-starred the beautiful Jennifer Holt, veteran actor Jack Holt's daughter. This picture was also unique as being PRC's first western to be shot in color, albeit in Cinecolor, a process favored by low-budget producers because it was much cheaper than the better known (and more garish) Technicolor, even though it was decidedly inferior and gave films shot in it an anemic, washed-out look.
Although he wasn't the star, and billed as "the Cheyenne Kid," LaRue received a relatively large amount of fan mail where it then dawned on the powers-that-be at PRC they had a potential star on their hands. Not wanting to mess with a good thing, the studio paired the whip-cracking LaRue with the singing Dean two more times before splitting them off into their own pictures. LaRue quickly adopted an all-black wardrobe and rode a jet black horse to accentuate his image as a bad guy / good guy, sort of an early western anti-hero. He was assigned a sidekick, the hard-drinking, middle-aged Al St. John--a former Keystone Kop for Mack Sennett--beginning with Law of the Lash (1947) and the two gradually became good friends. At PRC he became "King of the Bullwhip" and a solid staple of Saturday-afternoon matinees. LaRue remained with the company after it morphed into Eagle-Lion in 1948, usually playing a character named Cheyenne Davis, before adopting the "Lash" moniker he'd been using for years in screen credits. In private life LaRue loved booze, women and flashy--preferably custom-tailored--clothes. He was married so often it was hard to keep track of his wives, but most sources agree that the number ranged from 10 to 12, two of his more notable ones being actresses Reno Browne, a blonde beauty who co-starred in a few of his films, and Barbra Fuller. Aside from a penchant for marrying pretty much anyone he became attracted to, he also acquired an alcohol problem (which he would battle, with varying degrees of success, for the rest of his life) and after his acting career waned in the early '50s he ran into financial problems. Despite having one of the more recognizable names in B-westerns, he never ranked among the top stars in popularity polls, probably attributable less to his screen persona or acting ability and more to his films' awful scripts and deplorable lack of production values due to PRC's legendary cheapness, a factor which hurt the careers of many of the studio's western stars (had he been signed to a less penurious studio like Republic or Columbia, his career might have risen to far greater heights). LaRue almost always performed his own stunts--mainly because PRC was loathe to spend money on professional stunt men, who in those days demanded higher pay than the stars they were doubling for--a fact he took pride in and made sure that he "conveniently" lost his hat during action scenes so his audience could see that it was actually him in the fray and not a stunt double.
It's interesting to note that although he was never a top-ranked cowboy star during his heyday, he rated his own comic book series that lasted until 1960. After riding out a particularly rough period of his life in the 1960s, he began appearing at Hollywood memorabilia and western shows where he cheerfully greeted fans, happily signed autographs and gained a reputation of being pleasantly accessible. He died in 1996.- Actor
- Soundtrack
An All-American halfback while attending the University of Alabama, Johnny Mack Brown chose the silver screen over the green grass of the football field when he graduated. Signed to a contract with MGM in 1926, Brown debuted in Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927) with William Haines in a film about - baseball. This was followed by The Bugle Call (1927), which starred the fading Jackie Coogan. In 1928 he appeared in the last Norma Shearer silent film, A Lady of Chance (1928). After that, he worked with Greta Garbo, Marion Davies and Mary Pickford. His muscular good looks only carried him so far in films, however, and by 1930 he had yet to find his place. At MGM Clark Gable was taking the roles that Brown was up for, so he went into a western for director King Vidor, Billy the Kid (1930). While Vidor did not want him for the part to begin with, the picture was successful; however, Brown's career at MGM soon ended. By 1933 he was still making westerns, but they were for low-rung studios like Mascot. More westerns at even lower-rung Supreme Pictures followed, as well as serials like Wild West Days (1937) at Universal. In 1943 Brown took his boots over to Monogram Pictures, where he made over 60 westerns. He started off as "Nevada Jack McKenzie" in the Rough Riders series, but the name soon changed to Johnny. As with most of the early cowboy stars, he was a hero to millions of young children and consistently among the top ten money-makers in westerns from 1942-50. The bubble burst, though, just as it did for Allan Lane, in 1953, as the days of the "B" western came to an end.- Actor
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Most western action film heroes begin and end their career in the saddle. Not so for cowboy idol Allan Lane (nicknamed "Rocky"), who started as a leading man in major studio dramas only to segue into "B" serials and sagebrush sagas in later life. The Indiana native was born in 1909 (some sources claim 1904). His attentions, however, veered toward the theater and he left school to join a Cincinnati stock company. He toured with "Hit the Deck" to New York City and continued there in various other theater projects. A Fox talent scout discovered Lane in 1929, and he left New York for Hollywood. Making his debut with Not Quite Decent (1929), he had trouble rising in stature, however, and left Hollywood in 1932, giving it a second try a few years later. His second attempt saw him enjoying second lead roles in good quality "B" films throughout the late 1930s, including Stowaway (1936) with little Shirley Temple, Maid's Night Out (1938) with Joan Fontaine, and Twelve Crowded Hours (1939), co-starring Lucille Ball. Searching for better roles, he signed with Republic in 1940, and after struggling a bit in his initial films he hit pay dirt after teaming with Linda Stirling in the popular serial The Tiger Woman (1944). His own serials as steadfast Mountie Dave King proved popular, and around this time he started gaining added attention as a photogenic and very personable cowboy star. With his trusty steed "Blackjack," Lane managed to churn out a bucketful of oaters every year, beginning with Silver City Kid (1944), for nearly a decade, trading blows with the bad guys and seeing justice prevail. Following this chapter of his career, he left films and toured with circuses and rodeo shows until the TV series Red Ryder (1951) came his way. He may be better remembered these days not for his dashing good looks and saddle appeal on film but to older generations as the off-camera voice for the talking horse Mister Ed (1961) in the classic 1960s sitcom of the same name. Lane retired shortly thereafter and died on October 27, 1973, after a six-week bout with cancer.- Actor
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Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a part in a two-reeler by the independent producer Hans Tiesler . Eileen Sedgwick was his first leading lady. He then appeared in The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926) for United Artists before moving to Paramount. While there he appeared in a small part in Wings (1927), It (1927), and other films.- Actor
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Audie Murphy became a national hero during World War II as the most decorated combat soldier of the war. Among his 33 awards was the Medal of Honor, the highest award for bravery that a soldier can receive. In addition, he was also decorated for bravery by the governments of France and Belgium, and was credited with killing over 240 German soldiers and wounding and capturing many more.
Audie Leon Murphy was born in Kingston, Hunt County, Texas, to Josie Bell (Killian) and Emmett Berry Murphy, poor sharecroppers of Irish descent. After the death of his mother and the outbreak of WWII, Murphy enlisted in the army on his 17th birthday in June 1942 after being turned down by the Navy and the Marines. His eldest sister had provided a false affidavit that he was a year older (18) than his actual age.
After undergoing basic military training, he was sent first to North Africa. However, the Allies drove the German army from Tunisia, their last foothold in North Africa, before Murphy's unit could be sent into battle. His first engagement with Axis forces came when his unit was sent to Europe. First landing on the island of Sicily, next mainland Italy, and finally France, he fought in seven major campaigns over three years and rose from the rank of private to a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant.
Part of Murphy's appeal to many people was that he did't fit the "image" most had of a war hero. He was a slight, almost fragile-looking, shy and soft-spoken young man, whose boyish appearance often shocked people when they learned, for example, that during one battle he leaped on top of a burning tank--which was loaded with fuel and ammunition and could have exploded at any second--and used its machine gun to hold off waves of attacking German troops, killing dozens of them and saving his own unit from certain destruction and the entire line from being overrun.
In September 1945, Murphy was released from active duty, promoted to 1st Lieutenant, and assigned to inactive status. His story caught the interest of superstar James Cagney, who invited Murphy to Hollywood.
Cagney Productions paid for acting and dancing lessons but was reluctantly forced to admit that Murphy -- at least at that point in his career -- didn't have what it took to become a movie star. For the next several years he struggled to make it as an actor, but jobs were few --specifically just two bit parts in Beyond Glory (1948) and Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven (1948). He finally got a lead role in Bad Boy (1949), and starred in the trouble-plagued production of MGM's The Red Badge of Courage (1951), directed by John Huston. While this film is now considered a minor classic, the politics behind the production sparked an irreparable fissure within the ranks of the studio's upper management.
Murphy proved adequate as an actor, but the film, with virtually no female presence (or appeal), bombed badly at the box office. Murphy, however, had already signed with Universal-International Pictures, which was putting him in a string of modestly budgeted Westerns, a genre that suited his easygoing image and Texas drawl. He starred in the film version of his autobiography, To Hell and Back (1955), which was a huge hit, setting a box-office record for Universal that wasn't broken for 20 years until it was finally surpassed by Jaws (1975)). One of his better pictures was Night Passage (1957), a Western in which he played the kid brother of James Stewart. He worked with Huston again on The Unforgiven (1960).
Meanwhile, the studio system that Murphy grew into as an actor crumbled. Universal's new owners, MCA, dumped its "International" tag in 1962 and turned the studio's focus toward the more lucrative television industry. For theatrical productions, it dropped its roster of contract players and hired actors on a per-picture basis only. That cheap Westerns on the big screen were becoming a thing of the past bode no good for Murphy, either. The Texican (1966), his lone attempt at a new, European form of inexpensive horse opera, to become known as "the Spaghetti Western", was unsuccessful. His star was falling fast.
In addition to his acting career -- he made a total of 44 films -- Murphy was a rancher and businessman. He bred and raised thoroughbred horses and owned several ranches in Texas, Arizona and California. He was also a songwriter, and penned hits for such singers as Dean Martin, Eddy Arnold, Charley Pride, and many others.
During his postwar life, he suffered from what is now called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but was then called "combat fatigue", and was known to have a hair-trigger temper. He woke up screaming at night and slept with a loaded M1911 .45 semi-automatic pistol nearby. He was acquitted of attempted murder charges brought about by injuries he inflicted on a man in a bar fight. Director Don Siegel said in an interview that Murphy often carried a pistol on the set of The Gun Runners (1958) and many of the cast and crew were afraid of him.
He had a short-lived and turbulent marriage to Wanda Hendrix, and in the 1960s his increasing bouts of insomnia and depression resulted in his becoming addicted to a particularly powerful sleeping pill called Placidyl, an addiction he eventually broke. He ran into a streak of bad financial luck and was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1968. Admirably, he campaigned vigorously for the government to spend more time and money on taking care of returning Vietnam War veterans, as he knew, more than most, what kinds of problems they were going to have.
On May 18, 1971, Murphy was aboard a private plane on his way to a business meeting when it ran into thick fog over Craig County, Virginia, near Roanoke, and crashed into the side of a mountain, killing all six aboard. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. According to cemetery records, the only gravesite visited by more people than that of Murphy is that of assassinated President John F. Kennedy.- Music Artist
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Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, to Gaetano Alfonso "Guy" Crocetti, an Italian immigrant and barber, and his Ohio-born wife, Angela (Barra) Crocetti. He spoke only Italian until age five. Martin came up the hard way, with such jobs as a boxer ("Kid Crochet"), a steel mill worker, a gas station worker and a casino croupier/dealer. In 1946, Martin got his first ticket to stardom, as he teamed up with another hard worker who was also trying to succeed in Hollywood: Jerry Lewis. Films such as At War with the Army (1950) sent the team toward super-stardom. The duo were to become one of Hollywood's truly great teams. They lasted 11 years together, and starred in 16 movies. They were unstoppable, but personality conflicts broke up the team. Even without Lewis, Martin was a true superstar.
Few thought that Martin would go on to achieve solo success, but he did, winning critical acclaim for his role in The Young Lions (1958) with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift, and Some Came Running (1958), with Shirley MacLaine and Frank Sinatra. Movies such as Rio Bravo (1959) brought him international fame. One of his best remembered films is in Ocean's Eleven (1960), in which he played Sam Harmon alongside the other members of the legendary Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford. Martin proved potent at the box office through the 1960s, with films such as Bells Are Ringing (1960) and Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), again with Rat Pack pals Sammy Davis Jr. and Sinatra. During much of the 1960s and 1970s, his film persona of a boozing playboy prompted a series of films as secret agent Matt Helm and his own television variety show. Airport (1970) followed, featuring Martin as a pilot. He played a phony priest in The Cannonball Run (1981).
In 1965, Martin explored a new method for entertaining his fans: Television. That year he hosted one of the most successful TV series in history: The Dean Martin Show (1965), which lasted until 1973. In 1965, it won a Golden Globe Award. In 1973, he renamed it "The Dean Martin Comedy Hour", and from 1974 to 1984 it was renamed again, this time "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts". It became one of the most successful TV series in history, skewering such greats as Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, Lucille Ball, James Stewart, George Burns, Milton Berle, Don Rickles, Phyllis Diller, and Joe Namath.
His last public role was a return to the stage, for a cross-country concert tour with Davis and Sinatra. He spoke affectionately of his fellow Rat Packers. "The satisfaction that I get out of working with these two bums is that we have more laughs than the audience has", Martin said. After the 1980s, Martin took it easy until his son, Dean Paul Martin, was killed in a plane crash in March 1987.
Devastated by the loss, from which he never recovered, he walked out on a reunion tour with Sinatra and Davis. Martin spent his final years in solitude, out of the public light. A heavy smoker most of his life, Martin died on Christmas Day 1995 at age 78 from complications to lung cancer.- Actor
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Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, to Katherine (Wood), a telephone operator, and Roy Harold Scherer, an auto mechanic. He was of German, Swiss-German, English, and Irish descent. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. He failed to obtain parts in school plays because he couldn't remember lines. After high school he was a postal employee and during WW II served as a Navy airplane mechanic. After the war he was a truck driver. His size and good looks got him into movies. His name was changed to Rock Hudson, his teeth were capped, he took lessons in acting, singing, fencing and riding. One line in his first picture, Fighter Squadron (1948), needed 38 takes. In 1956 he received an Oscar nomination for Giant (1956) and two years later Look magazine named him Star of the Year. He starred in a number of bedroom comedies, many with Doris Day, and had his own popular TV series McMillan & Wife (1971). He had a recurring role in TV's Dynasty (1981) (1984-5). He was the first major public figure to announce he had AIDS, and his worldwide search for a cure drew international attention. After his death his long-time lover Marc Christian successfully sued his estate, again calling attention to the homosexuality Rock had hidden from most throughout his career.- Actor
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American leading man famed as the star of one of the longest-running shows in U.S. television history, Gunsmoke (1955). Born of Norwegian heritage (the family name, Aurness, had formerly been Aursness) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Rolf and Ruth Duesler Aurness. His father was a traveling salesman of medical supplies and his mother later became a newspaper columnist. James attended West High School in Minneapolis. Although he appeared in school plays, he had no interest in performing, and dreamed instead of going to sea. After high school, he attended one semester at Beloit College before receiving his draft notice in 1943. He entered the army and trained at Camp Wheeler, Georgia, before shipping out for North Africa. At Casablanca, Arness joined the 3rd Infantry Division in time for the invasion of Anzio. Ten days after the invasion, Arness was severely wounded in the leg and foot by German machine-gun fire. His wounds, which plagued him the rest of his life, resulted in his medical discharge from the army.
While recuperating in a hospital in Clinton, Iowa, Arness was visited by his younger brother Peter (later to gain fame as actor Peter Graves), who suggested he take a radio course at the University of Minnesota. James did so, and a teacher recommended him for a job as an announcer at a Minneapolis radio station. Though seemingly headed for success in radio, he followed a boyhood friend's suggestion and went with the friend to Hollywood to find work as a film extra. Arness studied at the Bliss-Hayden Theatre School under actor Harry Hayden, and while appearing in a play there was spotted by agent Leon Lance. Lance got the actor a role as Loretta Young's brother in The Farmer's Daughter (1947). The director of that film, H.C. Potter, recommended that he drop the "u" from his last name and soon thereafter the actor was officially known as James Arness.
Little work followed this break, and Arness became sort of beach bum, living on the shore at San Onofre and spending his days surfing. He began taking his acting career more seriously when he began to receive fan mail following the release of the Young picture. He appeared in a production of "Candida" at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, and married his leading lady, Virginia Chapman. She pressed him to study acting and to work harder in pursuit of a career, but Arness has been consistent in ascribing his success to luck. He began to act small roles with frequency, often due to his size, and mostly villainous characters. Most notable among these was that of the space alien in The Thing from Another World (1951).
While playing a Greek warrior in a play, Arness was spotted by agent Charles K. Feldman, who represented John Wayne. Feldman introduced Arness to Wayne, who put the self-described 6', 6" actor under personal contract. Arness played several roles over the next few years for and with Wayne, whom he considered a mentor. In 1955, Wayne recommended Arness for the lead role of Matt Dillon in the TV series Gunsmoke (1955). (Contrary to urban legend, Wayne himself was never offered the role.) Arness at first declined, thinking a TV series could derail his growing film career, but Wayne argued for the show, and Arness accepted. His portrayal of stalwart Marshal Dillon became an iconic figure in American television and the series, aired for 20 seasons, is, as of 2008, the longest-running dramatic series in U.S. television history. Arness became world-famous and years later reprized the character in a series of TV movies.
After the surprising cancellation of "Gunsmoke" in 1975, Arness jumped immediately into another successful (though much shorter-lived) Western project, a TV-movie-miniseries-series combination known as "How The West Was Won." A brief modern police drama, McClain's Law (1981), followed, and Arness played his mentor John Wayne's role in Red River (1988), a remake of the Wayne classic.
Following the aforementioned "Gunsmoke" TV movies (the last in 1994, when Arness was 71), Arness basically retired. His marriage to Virginia Chapman ended in divorce in 1960. They had three children, one of whom, Jenny Lee, committed suicide in 1975. Arness subsequently married Janet Surtrees in 1978.- Actor
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Chuck Connors was born Kevin Joseph Connors in Brooklyn, New York, to Marcella (nee Lundrigan; died 1971) and Alban Francis "Allan" Connors (died 1966), Roman Catholic immigrants of Irish descent from the Dominion of Newfoundland (now part of Canada). Chuck and his two-years-younger sister, Gloria, grew up in a working-class section of the west side of Brooklyn, where their father worked the local docks as a longshoreman. He served as an altar boy at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica School and attended school there. He later became a member of the Bay Ridge Boys' Club and playing sandlot ball as a member of the Bay Ridge Celtics.
A life-long Dodgers' fan, he always dreamed of a baseball career with his favorite team. His natural athletic prowess earned him a scholarship to Adelphi Academy, a private high school, and then to Seton Hall, a Catholic college in South Orange, New Jersey. Leaving Seton Hall after two years, on October 20, 1942, aged 21, he joined the army, listing his occupation as a ski instructor. After enlistment in the infantry at Fort Knox, he later served mostly as a tank-warfare instructor at Camp Campbell, Kentucky, and then finally at West Point. Following his discharge early in 1946, he resumed his athletic pursuits. He played center for the Boston Celtics in the 1946-47 season but left early for spring training with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Baseball had always been Connors' first love, and for the next several years he knocked about the minor leagues in such places as Rochester (NY), Norfolk (VA), Newark (NJ), Newport News (VA), Mobile (AL) and Montreal, Canada (while in Montreal he met Elizabeth Riddell, whom he married in October 1948. They had four sons during their 13-year marriage). He finally reached his goal, playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, in May 1949, but after just five weeks and one at-bat, he returned to Montreal. After a brief stint with the Chicago Cubs in 1951, during which he hit two home runs, Connors wound up with the Cubs' Triple-A farm team, the L.A. Angels, in 1952.
A baseball fan who was also a casting director for MGM spotted Connors and recommended him for a part in the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn comedy Pat and Mike (1952). Originally cast to play a prizefighter, but that role went instead to Aldo Ray. Connors was cast as a captain in the state police. He now abandoned his athletic hopes and devoted full time to his acting career, which often emphasized his muscular 6'6" physique.
During the next several years Connors made 20 movies, culminating in a key role in William Wyler's 1958 western The Big Country (1958). Also appearing in many television series, he finally hit the big time in 1958 with The Rifleman (1958), which began its highly successful five-year run on ABC. Other television series followed, as did a number of movies which, though mostly minor, allowed Connors to display his range as both a stalwart "good guy" and a menacing "heavy".
Connors died at age 71 of lung cancer and pneumonia on November 10, 1992 in Los Angeles, California. He is buried in San Fernando Mission Cemetery with his tombstone carrying a photo of Connors as Lucas McCain in "The Rifleman" as well as logos from the three professional sports teams he played for: the Dodgers, Cubs and Celtics.- Actor
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Richard Allen Boone was born in Los Angeles, California, to Cecile Lillian (Beckerman) and Kirk Etna Boone, a wealthy corporate lawyer. His maternal grandparents were Russian Jewish immigrants, while his father was descended from a brother of frontiersmen Daniel Boone and Squire Boone.
Richard was a college student, boxer, painter and oil-field laborer before ending up in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war he used the G.I. Bill to study acting with the Actor's Studio in New York. Serious and methodical, Boone debuted on Broadway in the play "Medea". Other plays followed, as did occasional TV work. In 1950 20th Century-Fox signed him to a contract and he made his screen debut in Halls of Montezuma (1951), playing a Marine Corps officer. Tall and craggy, Boone was continually cast in a number of war and western movies. He also tackled roles such as Pontius Pilate in The Robe (1953) and a police detective in Vicki (1953). In 1954 he was cast as Dr. Konrad Styner in the pioneering medical series Medic (1954), which was a critical but not a ratings success. This role lasted for two years, though in the meantime, he continued to appear in westerns and war movies.
In 1957 he played Dr. Wright, who treats Elizabeth for her memory lapses, in Lizzie (1957). It was also in that year that Boone was cast in what is his best-known role, the cultured gunfighter Paladin in the highly regarded western series Have Gun - Will Travel (1957). Although a gun for hire, Paladin was usually a moral one, did the job and lived at the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. Immensely popular, the show made Boone a star. The series lasted six years, and in addition to starring in it, Boone also directed some episodes. He still kept busy on the big screen during the series' run, appearing as Sam Houston in the John Wayne epic The Alamo (1960), and as a weary cavalry captain fighting Indians in A Thunder of Drums (1961). After Have Gun - Will Travel (1957) ended in 1963, Boone hosted a dramatic anthology series, The Richard Boone Show (1963), but it was not successful.
Boone moved to Hawaii for the next seven years. During this time he made a few Westerns, including the muscular Rio Conchos (1964), but he was largely absent from the screen. In the 1970s he moved to Florida, and resumed his film and TV career with a vengeance. In 1972 he again appeared on television in the Jack Webb-produced series Hec Ramsey (1972) (years before he had played a police captain in Webb's first "Dragnet" film, Dragnet (1954)). Based on a real man, Hec was a tough, grizzled old frontier sheriff at the turn of the 20th century who, late in life, has studied the newest scientific theories of crime detection. His new boss, a much younger man, doesn't always approve of Hec, his nonconformist style or his new methods. The series lasted for two years. Boone continued working until the end of the decade but died as a result of throat cancer in 1981.- Actor
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Tall, thin, wiry Sam Elliott is the classic picture of the American cowboy. Elliott began his acting career on the stage and his film debut was in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). Although his future wife, Katharine Ross co-starred in the film, the two did not meet until they filmed The Legacy (1978) together. Over the years there would be few opportunities to act in feature westerns, but it would be television that gave him that opportunity, in The Sacketts (1979), The Shadow Riders (1982) and The Yellow Rose (1983), among others. He would also work in non-westerns, usually as a tough guy, as in Lifeguard (1976) and Road House (1989). In 1985 he played Cher's love interest Gar in the drama Mask (1985), and he was in some cop movies such as Fatal Beauty (1987) and Shakedown (1988). In the 1990s, Elliott was back on the western trail, playing everyone from Brig. Gen. John Buford in the film Gettysburg (1993) to Wild Bill Hickok in the made-for-TV movie Buffalo Girls (1995). In 1991 he wrote the screenplay and co-starred with his wife in the made-for-TV western Conagher (1991), and two years later he played Wyatt Earp's brother Virgil in Tombstone (1993), with Kurt Russell as Wyatt. In 1995 the starred as John Pierce the tense thriller The Final Cut (1995), as a former head of a Bomb Squad who must to stop a dangerous bomber. In 1998 he was the narrator of the hilarious comedy The Big Lebowski (1998), playing him as The Stranger, and returned to the Western in the drama The Hi-Lo Country (1998), closing the 20th century with another western, the TV movie You Know My Name (1999).
Sam Elliott started the 21st century with the Stephen Frears' TV movie Fail Safe (2000) playing Congressman Raskob, and The Contender (2000) as Kermit Newman, at the side of Joan Allen, Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman, and in We Were Soldiers (2002) as Sgt. Maj. Basil Plumley, together Mel Gibson. In 2003 he played Gen. Thunderbolt Ross in the Ang Lee's pre-MCU Hulk (2003), repeating in another Marvel superhero movie as Caretaker in Ghost Rider (2007). After participating in the fantasy movie The Golden Compass (2007) and made a stellar cameo in Up in the Air (2009), Elliott played Clay Wheeler in the box office flop comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans? (2009), starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker, and in 2012 he was a supporting character as Mac Macleod in Robert Redford's The Company You Keep (2012). After the playing Coach Moore in the sport drama Draft Day (2014) In 2015 Elliott was hyperactive, appearing in seven different productions including cinema and TV: Digging for Fire (2015), I'll See You in My Dreams (2015), Sam Elliott, the sixth season of Justified (2010) as Avery Markham, and The Good Dinosaur (2015) voicing Butch. Two years later was absolute star in the drama The Hero (2017) as Lee Hayden, and in the sci-fi movie The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot (2018) as Calvin Barr, to shine again as supporting character playing Bradley Cooper's brother Bobby in the multi-nominated Cooper's directorial debut A Star Is Born (2018), sharing scenes with Lady Gaga, coming back again to the western in the TV series 1883 (2021) as Shea Brennan.- Actor
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Clint Walker was born Norman Eugene Walker in Hartford, southwestern Illinois, to Gladys Huldah (Schwanda), a Czech immigrant, and Paul Arnold Walker, who was from Arkansas. Walker almost single-handedly started the western craze on TV in the 1950s as Cheyenne Bodie in Cheyenne (1955). Growing up in the Depression era meant taking work wherever you could get it, and Walker found himself working at such jobs as Mississippi River boatman, carnival roustabout and golf caddy. He quit high school at 16 and at age 17 joined the Merchant Marine. After the war he worked his way cross country, including working in the oil fields in Brownwood, Texas, and wound up in California, where he worked as an undercover agent for a private detective agency on the Long Beach waterfront. After a while he took a job as a security officer at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. It was there that he met quite a few Hollywood people who told him that his size, physique and good looks would serve him well in Hollywood and that he should go to Los Angeles and give it a try. He met actor Henry Wilcoxon, who introduced him to director Cecil B. DeMille, and Walker found himself playing the part of a Captain of the Guard in The Ten Commandments (1956). Someone from Warner Bros. saw the film, found out that Walker was under contract to producer Hal B. Wallis, bought up Walker's contract and gave him the lead in "Cheyenne". The series was a huge hit and spawned countless other western series, from Warners and other studios. However, Walker was dissatisfied with the way Warners was handling his career -- they would let other contract players make films, for example, but he wasn't allowed to -- and that triggered a dispute which ended up with him taking a walk from the show. He and Warners eventually settled their disagreements. When the show ended Walker began to get supporting parts in features, his biggest and most successful one being The Dirty Dozen (1967). He starred in the well-received The Night of the Grizzly (1966) and the not-so-well received None But the Brave (1965), a WWII film that was Frank Sinatra's one and only stab at directing. He also played the lead in Baker's Hawk (1976), and turned in a good performance as a villain in the TV movie Scream of the Wolf (1974). Lately he and several of his colleagues from "The Dirty Dozen" provided the voices for the animated film Small Soldiers (1998).- Actor
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Amiable and handsome James Garner had obtained success in both films and television, often playing variations of the charming anti-hero/con-man persona he first developed in Maverick, the offbeat western TV series that shot him to stardom in the late 1950s.
James Garner was born James Scott Bumgarner in Norman, Oklahoma, to Mildred Scott (Meek) and Weldon Warren Bumgarner, a carpet layer. He dropped out of high school at 16 to join the Merchant Marines. He worked in a variety of jobs and received 2 Purple Hearts when he was wounded twice during the Korean War. He had his first chance to act when a friend got him a non-speaking role in the Broadway stage play "The Caine Mutiny Court Martial (1954)". Part of his work was to read lines to the lead actors and he began to learn the craft of acting. This play led to small television roles, television commercials and eventually a contract with Warner Brothers. Director David Butler saw something in Garner and gave him all the attention he needed when he appeared in The Girl He Left Behind (1956). After co-starring in a handful of films during 1956-57, Warner Brothers gave Garner a co-starring role in the the western series Maverick (1957). Originally planned to alternate between Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) and Bret Maverick (Garner), the show quickly turned into the Bret Maverick Show. As Maverick, Garner was cool, good-natured, likable and always ready to use his wits to get him in or out of trouble. The series was highly successful, and Garner continued in it into 1960 when he left the series in a dispute over money.
In the early 1960s Garner returned to films, often playing the same type of character he had played on "Maverick". His successful films included The Thrill of It All (1963), Move Over, Darling (1963), The Great Escape (1963) and The Americanization of Emily (1964). After that, his career wandered and when he appeared in the automobile racing movie Grand Prix (1966), he got the bug to race professionally. Soon, this ambition turned to supporting a racing team, not unlike what Paul Newman would do in later years.
Garner found great success in the western comedy Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969). He tried to repeat his success with a sequel, Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), but it wasn't up to the standards of the first one. After 11 years off the small screen, Garner returned to television in a role not unlike that in Support Your Local Sheriff! (1969). The show was Nichols (1971) and he played the sheriff who would try to solve all problems with his wits and without gun play. When the show was canceled, Garner took the news by having Nichols shot dead, never to return in a sequel. In 1974 he got the role for which he will probably be best remembered, as wry private eye Jim Rockford in the classic The Rockford Files (1974). This became his second major television hit, with Noah Beery Jr. and Stuart Margolin, and in 1977 he won an Emmy for his portrayal. However, a combination of injuries and the discovery that Universal Pictures' "creative bookkeeping" would not give him any of the huge profits the show generated soon soured him and the show ended in 1980. In the 1980s Garner appeared in few movies, but the ones he did make were darker than the likable Garner of old. These included Tank (1984) and Murphy's Romance (1985). For the latter, he was nominated for both the Academy Award and a Golden Globe. Returning to the western mode, he co-starred with the young Bruce Willis in Sunset (1988), a mythical story of Wyatt Earp, Tom Mix and 1920s Hollywood.
In the 1990s Garner received rave reviews for his role in the acclaimed television movie about corporate greed, Barbarians at the Gate (1993). After that he appeared in the theatrical remake of his old television series, Maverick (1994), opposite Mel Gibson. Most of his appearances after that were in numerous TV movies based upon The Rockford Files (1974). His most recent films were My Fellow Americans (1996) and Space Cowboys (2000) .- Actor
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James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Ruth (Johnson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. He was of Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and some English descent. Stewart was educated at a local prep school, Mercersburg Academy, where he was a keen athlete (football and track), musician (singing and accordion playing), and sometime actor.
In 1929, he won a place at Princeton University, where he studied architecture with some success and became further involved with the performing arts as a musician and actor with the University Players. After graduation, engagements with the University Players took him around the northeastern United States, including a run on Broadway in 1932. But work dried up as the Great Depression deepened, and it was not until 1934, when he followed his friend Henry Fonda to Hollywood, that things began to pick up.
After his first screen appearance in Art Trouble (1934), Stewart worked for a time for MGM as a contract player and slowly began making a name for himself in increasingly high-profile roles throughout the rest of the 1930s. His famous collaborations with Frank Capra, in You Can't Take It with You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and, after World War II, It's a Wonderful Life (1946) helped to launch his career as a star and to establish his screen persona as the likable everyman.
Having learned to fly in 1935, he was drafted into the United States Army in 1940 as a private (after twice failing the medical for being underweight). During the course of World War II, he rose to the rank of colonel, first as an instructor at home in the United States, and later on combat missions in Europe. He remained involved with the United States Air Force Reserve after the war and officially retired in 1968. In 1959, he was promoted to brigadier general, becoming the highest-ranking actor in U.S. military history.
Stewart's acting career took off properly after the war. During the course of his long professional life, he had roles in some of Hollywood's best-remembered films, starring in a string of Westerns, bringing his everyman qualities to movies like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)), biopics (The Stratton Story (1949), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), and The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), for instance, thrillers (most notably his frequent collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock), and even some screwball comedies.
On June 25, 1997, a thrombosis formed in his right leg, leading to a pulmonary embolism, and a week later on July 2, 1997, surrounded by his children, James Stewart died at age 89 at his home in Beverly Hills, California. His last words to his family were, "I'm going to be with Gloria now".- Actor
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American actor Lee Marvin was born Lamont Waltman Marvin Jr. in New York City. After leaving school aged 18, Marvin enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve in August 1942. He served with the 4th Marine Division in the Pacific Theater during World War II and after being wounded in action and spending a year being treated in naval hospitals, he received a medical discharge. Marvin's military decorations include the Purple Heart Medal, the Presidential Unit Citation, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal and the Combat Action Ribbon. Returning to the United States it was while working as a plumbers apprentice, repairing a toilet at a local community theater, that he was asked to stand in for an actor who had fallen ill during rehearsals. He immediately caught the acting bug, moving to Greenwich Village to study at the American Theater Wing and began making appearances in stage productions and TV shows. His film debut came in 'You're in the Navy Now' (1951) but it was his portrayal of villains in 'The Big Heat' (1953) and 'The Wild One' (1953) that brought him to the attention of the public and critical acclaim. Now firmly established as a screen bad guy, he began shifting towards leading man roles and landed the lead role in the popular TV series 'M Squad' (1957-1960). Returning to feature films, Marvin had prominent roles in 'The Comancheros' (1961), 'The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance' (1962), 'Donovan's Reef' (1963) and 'The Killers' (1964) but it was his dual comic role in the offbeat western 'Cat Ballou' (1965) that made him a star and won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. He was now a much sought-after actor and starred in a number of movies as a new kind of leading man including 'The Professionals' (1966), 'The Dirty Dozen' (1967), 'Point Blank' (1967), 'Hell in the Pacific' (1968), 'Monte Walsh' (1970), 'Prime Cut' (1972), 'Emperor of the North' (1973) and 'The Spikes Gang' (1974).Later film credits include 'Shout at the Devil' (1976), 'Avalanche Express' (1979), 'The Big Red One' (1980), 'Death Hunt' (1981) and 'Gorky Park' (1983). His final film role was alongside Chuck Norris in 'The Delta Force' (1986). Lee Marvin died of a heart attack in August 1987. He was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Marvin paved the way for leading men that didn't fit the traditional mould. An iconic American tough guy and one of the 20th Century's greatest Hollywood stars.- Actor
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Born in Oklahoma, Ben Johnson was a ranch hand and rodeo performer when, in 1940, Howard Hughes hired him to take a load of horses to California. He decided to stick around (the pay was good), and for some years was a stunt man, horse wrangler, and double for such stars as John Wayne, Gary Cooper and James Stewart. His break came when John Ford noticed him and gave him a part in an upcoming film, and eventually a star part in Wagon Master (1950). He left Hollywood in 1953 to return to rodeo, where he won a world roping championship, but at the end of the year he had barely cleared expenses. The movies paid better, and were less risky, so he returned to the west coast and a career that saw him in over 300 movies.- Actor
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This remarkable, soft-spoken American began in films as a diffident juvenile. With passing years, he matured into a star character actor who exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He was born in Grand Island, Hall, Nebraska, the son of Herberta Elma (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who was a commercial printer, and proprietor of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the mid-1600s, they crossed the Atlantic and settled in upstate New York where they founded a community with the Fonda name.
Growing up, Henry developed an early interest in journalism after having a story published in a local newspaper. At the age of twelve, he helped in his father's printing business for $2 a week. Following graduation from high school in 1923, he got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. As it became difficult to juggle his working hours with his academic roster, he obtained another position as a physical education instructor at $30 a week, including room and board. By this time, he had grown to a height of six foot one and was a natural for basketball.
In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. Then, despite opposition from his parents, Henry accepted an offer from Gregory Foley, director of the Omaha Playhouse, to play the title role in 'Merton of the Movies'. His father would not speak to him for a month. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, after which Henry observed "the idea of being Merton and not myself taught me that I could hide behind a mask". For the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway.
In 1928, he headed east and briefly played in summer stock before joining the University Players, a group of talented Princeton and Harvard graduates among whose number were such future luminaries as James Stewart (who would remain his closest lifelong friend), Joshua Logan and Kent Smith. Before long, Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, soon to become the first of his five wives. Both marriage and the players broke up four years later. In 1932, Henry found himself sharing a two-room New York apartment with Jimmy Stewart and Joshua Logan. For the next two years, he alternated scenic design with acting at various repertory companies. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely.
It was Hayward who persuaded the 29-year old to become a motion picture actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (1935). With both first choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit. Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (1937) (with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance), the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (1936) (with ex-wife Sullavan), the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (1938) and the equally superb Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), in which Henry gave his best screen performance to date as the 'jackleg lawyer from Springfield'. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), with Henry as Tom Joad, often regarded his career-defining role as the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. It also set the tone for his subsequent career. Whether he played a lawman (Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (1946)), a reluctant posse member (The Ox-Bow Incident (1942), a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in (12 Angry Men (1957)) or a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder (The Wrong Man (1956)), his characters were alike in projecting integrity and quiet authority. In this vein, he also gave a totally convincing (though historically inaccurate) portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original.
Henry rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck -- with whom he shared an excellent on-screen chemistry -- in The Mad Miss Manton (1938) and The Lady Eve (1941). He was also good value as a poker-playing grifter in the western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966). Finally, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's classic Once Upon a Time in the West (1968). Illness curtailed his work in the 1970s. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (1981), in which he was joined by his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, he died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers.- Actor
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One of the great movie villains, Clarence Leroy Van Cleef, Jr. was born in Somerville, New Jersey, to Marion Lavinia (Van Fleet) and Clarence LeRoy Van Cleef, Sr. His parents were of Dutch ancestry. Van Cleef started out as an accountant. He served in the U.S. Navy aboard minesweepers and sub chasers during World War II. After the war he worked as an office administrator, becoming involved in amateur theatrics in his spare time. An audition for a professional role led to a touring company job in "Mr. Roberts". His performance was seen by Stanley Kramer, who cast him as henchman Jack Colby in High Noon (1952), a role that brought him great recognition despite the fact that he had no dialogue. For the next decade, he played a string of memorably villainous characters, primarily in westerns but also in crime dramas such as The Big Combo (1955). His hawk nose and steely, slit eyes seemed destined to keep him always in the realm of heavies, but in the mid 1960s Sergio Leone cast him as the tough but decent Col. Mortimer opposite Clint Eastwood in For a Few Dollars More (1965). A new career as a western hero (or at least anti-hero) opened up, and Van Cleef became an international star, though in films of decreasing quality. In the 1980s, he moved easily into action and martial-arts movies and starred in The Master (1984), a TV series featuring almost non-stop martial arts action. He died of a heart attack in December 1989 and was buried at Forest Lawn in the Hollywood Hills.- Actor
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Veteran actor and director Robert Selden Duvall was born on January 5, 1931, in San Diego, CA, to Mildred Virginia (Hart), an amateur actress, and William Howard Duvall, a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, IL), then served a two-year hitch in the army after graduating in 1953. He began attending The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre In New York City on the G.I. Bill in 1955, studying under Sanford Meisner along with Dustin Hoffman, with whom Duvall shared an apartment. Both were close to another struggling young actor named Gene Hackman. Meisner cast Duvall in the play "The Midnight Caller" by Horton Foote, a link that would prove critical to his career, as it was Foote who recommended Duvall to play the mentally disabled "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962). This was his first "major" role since his 1956 motion picture debut as an MP in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), starring Paul Newman.
Duvall began making a name for himself as a stage actor in New York, winning an Obie Award in 1965 playing incest-minded longshoreman "Eddie Carbone" in the off-Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge", a production for which his old roommate Hoffman was assistant director. He found steady work in episodic TV and appeared as a modestly billed character actor in films, such as Arthur Penn's The Chase (1966) with Marlon Brando and in Robert Altman's Countdown (1967) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Rain People (1969), in both of which he co-starred with James Caan.
He was also memorable as the heavy who is shot by John Wayne at the climax of True Grit (1969) and was the first "Maj. Frank Burns", creating the character in Altman's Korean War comedy M*A*S*H (1970). He also appeared as the eponymous lead in George Lucas' directorial debut, THX 1138 (1971). It was Francis Ford Coppola, casting The Godfather (1972), who reunited Duvall with Brando and Caan and provided him with his career breakthrough as mob lawyer "Tom Hagen". He received the first of his six Academy Award nominations for the role.
Thereafter, Duvall had steady work in featured roles in such films as The Godfather Part II (1974), The Killer Elite (1975), Network (1976), The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) and The Eagle Has Landed (1976). Occasionally this actor's actor got the chance to assay a lead role, most notably in Tomorrow (1972), in which he was brilliant as William Faulkner's inarticulate backwoods farmer. He was less impressive as the lead in Badge 373 (1973), in which he played a character based on real-life NYPD detective Eddie Egan, the same man his old friend Gene Hackman had won an Oscar for playing, in fictionalized form as "Popeye Doyle" in The French Connection (1971).
It was his appearance as "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in another Coppola picture, Apocalypse Now (1979), that solidified Duvall's reputation as a great actor. He got his second Academy Award nomination for the role, and was named by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most versatile actor in the world. Duvall created one of the most memorable characters ever assayed on film, and gave the world the memorable phrase, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"
Subsequently, Duvall proved one of the few established character actors to move from supporting to leading roles, with his Oscar-nominated turns in The Great Santini (1979) and Tender Mercies (1983), the latter of which won him the Academy Award for Best Actor. Now at the summit of his career, Duvall seemed to be afflicted with the fabled "Oscar curse" that had overwhelmed the careers of fellow Academy Award winners Luise Rainer, Rod Steiger and Cliff Robertson. He could not find work equal to his talents, either due to his post-Oscar salary demands or a lack of perception in the industry that he truly was leading man material. He did not appear in The Godfather Part III (1990), as the studio would not give in to his demands for a salary commensurate with that of Al Pacino, who was receiving $5 million to reprise Michael Corleone.
His greatest achievement in his immediate post-Oscar period was his triumphant characterization of grizzled Texas Ranger Gus McCrae in the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989), for which he received an Emmy nomination. He received a second Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in Stalin (1992), and a third Emmy nomination playing Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in The Man Who Captured Eichmann (1996).
The shakeout of his career doldrums was that Duvall eventually settled back into his status as one of the premier character actors in the industry, rivaled only by his old friend Gene Hackman. Duvall, unlike Hackman, also has directed pictures, including the documentary We're Not the Jet Set (1974), Angelo My Love (1983) and Assassination Tango (2002). As a writer-director, Duvall gave himself one of his most memorable roles, that of the preacher on the run from the law in The Apostle (1997), a brilliant performance for which he received his third Best Actor nomination and fifth Oscar nomination overall. The film brought Duvall back to the front ranks of great actors, and was followed by a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nod for A Civil Action (1998).
Robert Duvall will long be remembered as one of the great naturalistic American screen actors in the mode of Spencer Tracy and his frequent co-star Marlon Brando. His performances as "Boo Radley" in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), "Jackson Fentry" in Tomorrow (1972), "Tom Hagen" in the first two "Godfather" movies, "Frank Hackett" in Network (1976), "Lt. Col. Kilgore" in Apocalypse Now (1979), "Bull Meechum" in The Great Santini (1979), "Mac Sledge" in Tender Mercies (1983), "Gus McCrae" in Lonesome Dove (1989) and "Sonny Dewey" in The Apostle (1997) rank as some of the finest acting ever put on film. It's a body of work that few actors can equal, let alone surpass.- Actor
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Gruff, burly American character actor. Born in 1903 in Benkelman, Nebraska (confirmed by Social Security records; sources stating 1905 or Denver, Colorado are in error.) Bond grew up in Denver, the son of a lumberyard worker. He attended the University of Southern California, where he got work as an extra through a football teammate who would become both his best friend and one of cinema's biggest stars: John Wayne. Director John Ford promoted Bond from extra to supporting player in the film Salute (1929), and became another fast friend. An arrogant man of little tact, yet fun-loving in the extreme, Bond was either loved or hated by all who knew him. His face and personality fit perfectly into almost any type of film, and he appeared in hundreds of pictures in his more than 30-year career, in both bit parts and major supporting roles. In the films of Wayne and Ford, particularly, he was nearly always present. Among his most memorable roles are John L. Sullivan in Gentleman Jim (1942), Det. Tom Polhaus in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and the Rev. Capt. Samuel Johnson Clayton The Searchers (1956). An ardent but anti-intellectual patriot, he was perhaps the most vehement proponent, among the Hollywood community, of blacklisting in the witch hunts of the 1950s, and he served as a most unforgiving president of the ultra-right-wing Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. In the mid-'50s he gained his greatest fame as the star of TV's Wagon Train (1957). During its production, Bond traveled to Dallas, Texas, to attend a football game and died there in his hotel room of a massive heart attack.- Actor
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Terence Hill was born as Mario Girotti on March 29, 1939 in Venice, Italy to a chemist. His mother was German, and as a child the family lived near Dresden, Saxony, Germany where they survived the Allied bombings of World War II. Italian film-maker Dino Risi discovered him at a swimming meet and he made his first film at the age of 12, Vacanze col gangster (1952) (Holiday for Gangsters). He continued acting to finance his studies and motorcycle hobby. After studying classical literature at the University of Rome for three years, he decided to devote full time to acting. In 1962 he appeared in Luchino Visconti's The Leopard (1963), He then signed a contract for a series of adventure and western films in Germany. In 1967 he returned to Italy to play the lead in God Forgives... I Don't! (1967). While on location in Almeria, Spain, he married an American girl of Bavarian descent, Lori Zwicklbauer, who was the dialogue coach for the picture. The producers of this movie wanted him to change his name. He then got a list with 20 names on it and 24 hours time to choose one of these names. He decided to take Terence Hill cause he liked it the most and it has the same initials as his mother's name (Hildegard Thieme). They only told the public that "Hill" was his wife's name out of publicity reasons. At this time of upcoming feminism a man who took his wife's name was something special. In 1976 Hollywood called and he appeared in March or Die (1977) with Gene Hackman and starred in Mr. Billion (1977) with Valerie Perrine. Since then he has concentrated on action/adventure films starring himself and often working with long time partner Bud Spencer. Terence lives in Massachusetts and is a film producer, as well as talented and respected actor.(along with Bud Spencer, of course!)- Jay Silverheels was born on Canada's Six Nation's Reserve and was one of 10 children. He was a star lacrosse player and a boxer before he entered films as a stuntman in 1938. He worked in a number of films through the 1940s before gaining notice as the Osceola brother in a Humphrey Bogart film Key Largo (1948). Most of Silverheels' roles consisted of bit parts as an Indian character. In 1949, he worked in the movie The Cowboy and the Indians (1949) with another "B movie" actor Clayton Moore. Later that year, Silverheels was hired to play the faithful Indian companion, Tonto, in the TV series The Lone Ranger (1949) series, which brought him the fame that his motion picture career never did.
Silverheels recreated the role of Tonto in two big-screen color movies with Moore,The Lone Ranger (1956) and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold (1958). After the TV series ended in 1957, Silverheels could not escape the typecasting of Tonto. He would continue to appear in an occasional film and television show but became a spokesperson to improve the portrayal of Indians in the media. - Actor
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A former college athlete at the University of Texas, Fess studied drama in the early fifties and debuted in Springfield Rifle (1952). He made only a handful of movies until he was signed by Walt Disney to star in the "Davy Crockett" series. When Walt was looking for an actor to play the part of Davy, he screened the sci-fi movie Them! (1954) with James Arness. When he saw Fess in a scene, he chose him over Arness and Fess became an instant celebrity when "Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier" debuted in 1955. His appeal with children was enormous with the coon-skinned hat, the #1 hit song "The Ballad Of Davy Crockett", The Davy Crockett Bubble Gum Cards and Comic Books. But the craze ended almost as fast as it started in 1956, and Fess was typecast. Fess appeared in other Disney movies dealing with the early years of Davey and also in non-Crockett parts such as Old Yeller (1957). By 1959, unable to achieve the success that he had gained as Crockett, his career had leveled off. He made guest appearances on a number of television shows, but his attempted return to television in the series Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1962) was not successful. Unable to procure the rights to play Crockett from Disney, Fess tried the frontiersman role once again with the TV series Daniel Boone (1964). He played this role for six years and the fact that he had a beautiful red-headed wife in a color series did not hurt him at all. After Daniel Boone (1964), Fess retired from the screen and went into real estate, which was profitable. He was later forced to sue his "Daniel Boone" producers over the profits generated by the series.- Actor
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Colorful American character actor equally adept at vicious killers or grizzled sidekicks. As a child he worked in the cotton fields. He attended Santa Monica Junior College in California and subsequently became an accountant and, at one time, manager of the Bel Air Hotel. Elam got his first movie job by trading his accounting services for a role. In short time he became one of the most memorable supporting players in Hollywood, thanks not only to his near-demented screen persona but also to an out-of-kilter left eye, sightless from a childhood fight. He appeared with great aplomb in Westerns and gangster films alike, and in later years played to wonderful effect in comedic roles.- Actor
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In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and performed in school plays. He worked some in vaudeville and also in various jobs such as clerking in a bank and as a lumberjack. He toured in small musical comedy companies before entering the military in 1917. After his war service he went to Guatemala and raised pineapples, then migrated to Los Angeles, where he speculated in real estate. A few jobs as a film extra came his way beginning in 1923, then some work as a stuntman. He eventually achieved speaking roles, going from bit parts to substantial supporting parts in scores of features and short subjects between 1927 and 1938. In 1936 his role in Come and Get It (1936) won him the very first Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. He would win it twice more in the decade, and be nominated for a fourth. His range was enormous. He could play sophisticated businessmen, con artists, local yokels, cowhands and military officers with apparent equal ease. An accident in 1932 cost him most of his teeth, and he most often was seen in eccentric rural parts, often playing characters much older than his actual age. His career never really declined, and in the 1950s he became an even more endearing and familiar figure in several television series, most famously The Real McCoys (1957). He died in 1974 of emphysema, a beloved figure in movies and TV, the target of countless comic impressionists, and one of the best and most prolific actors of his time.- Slim Pickens spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Maj. "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964). Born in Kingsburg, near Fresno in California's Central Valley, he spent much of his boyhood in nearby Hanford, where he began rodeoing at the age of 12. Over the next two decades he toured the country on the rodeo circuit, becoming a highly-paid and well-respected rodeo clown, a job that entailed enormous danger. In 1950, at the age of 31, Slim married Margaret Elizabeth Harmon and that same year he was given a role in a western, Rocky Mountain (1950). He quickly found a niche in both comic and villainous roles in that genre. With his hoarse voice and pronounced western twang, he was not always easy to cast outside the genre, but when he was, as in "Dr. Strangelove", the results were often memorable. He died in 1983 after a long and courageous battle against a brain tumor. He was survived by his wife Margaret and children.
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Rotund comic character actor of American films. Born Andrew Vabre Devine in Flagstaff, Arizona, he was raised in nearby Kingman, Arizona, the son of an Irish-American hotel operator Thomas Devine and his wife Amy. Devine was an able athlete as a student and actually played semi-pro football under a phony name (Jeremiah Schwartz, often erroneously presumed to be his real name). Devine used the false name in order to remain eligible for college football. A successful football player at St. Mary & St. Benedict College, Arizona State Teacher's College, and Santa Clara University, Devine went to Hollywood with dreams of becoming an actor. After a number of small roles in silent films, he was given a good part in the talkie The Spirit of Notre Dame (1931) in part due to his fine record as a football player. His sound-film career seemed at risk due to his severely raspy voice, the result of a childhood injury. His voice, however, soon became his trademark, and he spent the next forty-five years becoming an increasingly popular and beloved comic figure in a wide variety of films. In the 1950s, his fame grew enormously with his co-starring role as Jingles P. Jones opposite Guy Madison's Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951), on television and radio simultaneously. In 1955, before the Hickok series ended, Devine took over the hosting job on a children's show retitled Andy's Gang (1955), in which he gained new fans among the very young. He continued active in films until his death in 1977. He was survived by his wife and two sons.