Morgan Woodward

Morgan Woodward (born 16 September 1925 in Fort Worth, Texas) is an American actor.

He is probably best known for his recurring role in Dallas as Marvin "Punk" Anderson. He also played the silent, sunglasses-wearing, "man with no eyes", Boss Godfrey (the Walking Boss) in Cool Hand Luke and holds the record for most Guest Appearances on the long-running Western TV series, Gunsmoke, with nineteen.

TV appearances

Woodward has many television guest appearances to his name, in shows such as:

• Gunsmoke (19 episodes, different characters)
• The Restless Gun
• Bonanza (8 episodes, different characters)
• Wagon Train (12 episodes, different characters)
• Have Gun - Will Travel
• Rawhide
• The Big Valley
• Hec Ramsey
• How The West Was Won
• Cimarron Strip (3 episodes, different characters)
• Branded
• The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo [as "Lobo"] (2 episodes as "Sheriff Lockwood")
• The Virginian (3 episodes, different characters)
• The High Chaparral (3 episodes, different characters)
• Daniel Boone (2 episodes, different characters)
• Star Trek [For which he guest-starred as two different characters in two different episodes.]
• McMillan & Wife
• Kung Fu (2 episodes, different characters)
• The Waltons
• Police Woman
• Starsky and Hutch
• Logan's Run (3 episodes as "Morgan")
• The Quest
• The Incredible Hulk
• CHiPs
• The Waltons (2 episodes as "Boone Walton")
• Fantasy Island (4 episodes, different characters)
• The Fall Guy
• Petrocelli (2 episodes, different characters)
• The A-Team (3 episodes, 2 different characters)
• Knight Rider
• Hill Street Blues (5 episodes as "John Renko")
• Matt Houston
• T. J. Hooker
• Scarecrow and Mrs. King
• Murder, She Wrote
• The X-Files
• Planet of the Apes
• Millennium
• The Dukes of Hazzard [where he spoofed his character of Boss Godfrey.]
• The Lucy Show [Played as a cowboy with John Wayne]
• Days of our Lives
• Dallas [Played as "Punk" Anderson the Oil Baron in numerous episodes]

Film work

Film credits include:

• Cool Hand Luke
• The Wild Country
• The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
• Supervan
• Battle Beyond the Stars
• Walking Tall: Final Chapter
• Girls Just Want to Have Fun
• The Great Locomotive Chase
• Gunsmoke: To the Last Man (TV)

Star Trek

Woodward is notable for having starred in two different episodes of the original series of Star Trek as two different characters. In the first-season episode "Dagger of the Mind" Woodward plays Dr. Simon Van Gelder, an attending physician at a hospital for the criminally insane. After discovering that the director of the facility is engaged in illegal brain experimentation, Van Gelder himself becomes a victim of these experiments and is confined as one of the patients. Escaping the facility to the orbiting USS Enterprise the deranged and incoherent (due to his brain damage) Van Gelder eventually recovers enough to be able to divulge the nefarious goings-on at the hospital. (This is with the aid of Mr. Spock's "mind meld", which is revealed for the first time in this episode.)

In the second-season episode, "The Omega Glory", Woodward portrays Captain Ron Tracey, the commander of the starship USS Exeter, a sister ship to the USS Enterprise. Convinced that he is permanently marooned on an unfamiliar planet, Tracey chooses to abandon his duty as a Starfleet officer, and in essence he "goes native", allying himself with some of the planet's natural inhabitants in their war against their competitors. Discovered by Captain Kirk, Tracey is eventually defeated and taken into custody for his violation of fundamental orders: "The Prime Directive".

The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp

One of Woodward's longest TV roles was as the deputy/sidekick "Shotgun" Gibbs in 1955-1961 TV series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp starring Hugh O'Brian. On that series, Woodward played a tall, cantankerous, shotgun-toting backwoodsman who eventually became the trusted deputy of lawman Wyatt Earp in his days as a Kansas lawman. Though often overshadowed by the cool menace of Douglas Fowley's Doc Holliday, Woodward portrayed Gibbs as a solid, trustworthy, and more pragmatic partner to Earp, making Gibbs a character who, though ostensibly rough around the edges, would gradually come to share many of the qualities demonstrated over the years by another trusted TV deputy, Ken Curtis' world-weary Festus Haggen on Gunsmoke.

Additional information

Woodward attended the University of Texas at Arlington, then Arlington State College in Arlington, Texas. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. Along with two of his four brothers, he has received recognition as a Distinguished Alumnus of the University. He is a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity.

His brother, Lee Woodward, was the weatherman with a lion puppet named "King Lionel" on the television station KOTV in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

External links

• Morgan Woodward at the Internet Movie Database
• Morgan Woodward at Memory Alpha (a Star Trek wiki)

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Name	Woodward, Morgan
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Date of birth	16 September 1925
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