- Richard Boone
infobox actor
name=Richard Allen Boone
caption=Richard Boone as Paladin in
"Have Gun – Will Travel "
birthdate=birth date|1917|6|18
birthplace=city-state|Los Angeles|California
deathdate=death date and age|1981|1|10|1917|6|18
deathplace=city-state|St. Augustine|FloridaRichard Allen Boone (
June 18 1917 –January 10 1981 ) was an Americanactor who starred in over 50 films and was notable for his roles in Westerns. He was best known as the star of the TV series "Have Gun – Will Travel ".Biography
Born in
Los Angeles, California , Boone was descended from a brother of frontiersmanDaniel Boone . He was the middle child of a well-to-do corporate lawyer. Boone leftStanford University prior to graduation and tried his hand at oil-rigging, bartending, painting and writing, before joining theNavy in 1941. He served as an aviation ordnanceman and saw combat on three ships in the South Pacific duringWorld War II .After the war, he used the
G.I. Bill to study acting at theActor's Studio inNew York . Serious and methodical, Boone debuted on Broadway in 1947 in the playMedea , and appeared inMacbeth (1948) andThe Man (1950).In 1950, Boone made his screen debut as a Marine in "
Halls of Montezuma ". He starred in three movies withJohn Wayne : "The Alamo" (asSam Houston ), "Big Jake ", and "The Shootist ".In 1953, he played
Pontius Pilate in the first releasedCinemascope film, "The Robe". He had only one scene in the film, in which he gives instructions toRichard Burton , who plays thecenturion ordered to crucifyChrist .From 1954 to 1956, Boone became a familiar face when he appeared weekly as the star of "Medic", receiving an
Emmy nomination for "Best Actor Starring in a Regular Series" in 1955.However, it was his second television show, "
Have Gun - Will Travel ", which made him a national star with his role asPaladin . The show ran from 1957 to 1963, with Boone receiving two more Emmy nominations -in 1959 and 1960.During the 1960s Boone appeared regularly on other television programs. He was a regular on the
What's My Line? Mystery Guests on the Sunday NightCBS-TV quiz show. On that show, he talked with hostJohn Charles Daly about their days working together on the TV show "The Front Page ".Boone also had his own television anthology, "
The Richard Boone Show ". Even though it only aired from 1963 to 1964, he received his fourthEmmy nomination in 1964. Along with "The Danny Kaye Show" and "The Dick Van Dyke Show ", "The Richard Boone Show" won aGolden Globe for Best Show in 1964.After cancellation of his weekly show, Boone and his family moved to
Honolulu, Hawaii . While living onOahu , Boone helped persuadeLeonard Freeman to film "Hawaii Five-O " exclusively in Hawaii. Prior to that, Freeman had planned to do "establishing" location shots in Hawaii, but most production would be done inSouthern California . Boone and others convinced Freeman that the islands could offer all necessary support for a major TV series and would provide an authenticity otherwise unobtainable. Freeman, impressed by Boone's love of Hawaii, offered him the role ofSteve McGarrett . Boone turned it down, and the role went toJack Lord , who shared Boone's enthusiasm, which Freeman considered vital.The six foot two inch (1.88 m) Boone continued to appear in movies, commonly as a villain. These include "
The Raid " (1954), "Man Without a Star " (1955King Vidor ), "The Tall T " (1957Budd Boetticher ), "The War Lord " (1965Franklin Schaffner ), "Hombre" (1967Martin Ritt ), "The Arrangement " (1968Elia Kazan ) and "The Shootist " (1976Don Siegel ).He directed the final scenes of "
The Night of the Following Day " (1968) at the insistence ofMarlon Brando , as Brando could no longer tolerate what he considered to be the incompetence of directorHubert Cornfield .Fact|date=December 2007 The film is generally considered the nadir of Brando's career. Boone, as usual, was cast as the heavy.Boone starred as
Hec Ramsey , a turn-of-the-20th-century Western-style detective who preferred to use his brain instead of his gun, in the TV series of the same name in the early 1970s. He once wryly noted to an interviewer in 1972, "You know, Hec Ramsey is a lot like Paladin, only fatter." [ [http://members.aol.com/lloldham/quotes.html Quotes from and about Richard Boone] ] Boone returned toThe Neighborhood Playhouse in New York — where he had once studied acting — to teach it, in the mid-1970s.Boone was married three times: to Jane Hopper (1937 – 1940),
Mimi Kelly (1949 – 1950), andClaire McAloon (1951), by whom he had a son, Peter.In 1965, he came third in the
Laurel Award for Best Action Performance —Sean Connery won first place with "Goldfinger" andBurt Lancaster won second place with "The Train ".In his final role, Boone played Commodore Matthew Perry in "Bushido Blade". He died soon afterward of throat cancer in
St. Augustine, Florida . His ashes were scattered in the ocean off Hawaii.Filmography
Movies
* "Halls of Montezuma" (1951)
* "Call Me Mister " (1951)
* "" (1951)
* "Red Skies of Montana " (1952)
* "Return of the Texan " (1952)
* "Kangaroo" (1952)
* "Way of a Gaucho " (1952)
* "Pony Soldier " (1952)
* "Man on a Tightrope " (1953)
* "Vicki" (1953)
* "The Robe" (1953)
* "City of Bad Men " (1953)
* "Beneath the 12-Mile Reef " (1953)
* "The Siege at Red River " (1954)
* "The Raid" (1954)
* "Dragnet" (1954)
* "Ten Wanted Men " (1955)
* "Man Without a Star " (1955)
* "Robbers' Roost " (1955)
* "The Big Knife " (1955)
* "Battle Stations " (1956)
* "Star in the Dust " (1956)
* "Away All Boats " (1956)
* "The Tall T " (1957)
* "Lizzie" (1957)
* "The Garment Jungle " (1957)
* "I Bury the Living " (1958)
* "Ocean's Eleven" (1960)
* "The Alamo" (1960)
* "A Thunder of Drums " (1961)
* "Rio Conchos" (1964)
* "The War Lord " (1965)
* "Hombre" (1967)
* "Kona Coast " (1968)
* "The Night of the Following Day " (1968)
* "The Arrangement " (1969)
* "The Kremlin Letter " (1970)
* "Madron (film) " (1970)
* "Big Jake " (1971)
* "Against a Crooked Sky " (1975)
* "Diamante Lobo " (1976)
* "The Shootist " (1976)
* "The Big Sleep" (1978)
* "Winter Kills" (1979)
* "The Bushido Blade" (1981)TV
* "
The Front Page " (1949)
* "Medic" (1954)
* "Have Gun – Will Travel " (1957)
* "The Richard Boone Show " (1963)
* "In Broad Daylight " (1971)
* "Deadly Harvest " (1972)
* "Hec Ramsey " (1972)
* "Goodnight, My Love " (1972)
* "The Great Niagara " (1974)
* "The Last Dinosaur " (1977)
* "The Hobbit" (voice ofSmaug the Dragon) (1977)Trivia
According to one trivia book, Paladin's first name was "Wire."Fact|date=December 2007 This came from Paladin's
business card , which read: "Have Gun Will Travel. Wire Paladin,San Francisco . Of course, the word Wire on the card referred to sending Paladin a telegram to request his services and was not meant to represent his first name."Fact|date=September 2008References
External links
*imdb name|id=0095524|name=Richard Boone Retrieved on
2008-01-26
*amg name|2:7360
*findagrave|2522 Retrieved on2008-01-26
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