Everything about Richard Boone totally explained
Richard Allen Boone (
June 18 1917 –
January 10 1981) was an
American actor 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 of a brother of frontiersman
Daniel Boone. He was the middle child of a well-to-do corporate lawyer. Boone left
Stanford University prior to graduation and tried his hand at oil-rigging, bartending, painting and writing, before joining the
Navy in 1941. He served as an aviation ordnance man and saw combat on three ships in the
South Pacific during
World War II.
After the war, he used the
G.I. Bill to study acting at the
Actor's Studio in
New York. Serious and methodical, Boone debuted on
Broadway in 1947 in the play
Medea, and appeared in
Macbeth (1948) and
The Man (1950).
In 1950, Boone made his screen debut as a
Marine in
Halls of Montezuma. He starred in three movies with
John Wayne:
The Alamo as
Sam Houston,
Big Jake, and
The Shootist.
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 became a national star with his role as
Paladin. 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 Night
CBS-TV quiz show. On that show, he talked with host
John 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 fourth
Emmy nomination in 1964. Along with
The Danny Kaye Show and
The Dick Van Dyke Show,
The Richard Boone Show won a
Golden Globe for Best Show in 1964.
After cancellation of his weekly show, Boone and his family moved to
Honolulu, Hawaii. While living on
Oahu, Boone helped persuade
Leonard 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 in
Southern 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 of
Steve McGarrett. Boone turned it down, and the role went to
Jack 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 (1955
King Vidor),
The Tall T (1957
Budd Boetticher),
The Alamo (1960
John Wayne),
The War Lord (1965
Franklin Schaffner),
Hombre (
1967 Martin Ritt),
The Arrangement (1968
Elia Kazan) and
The Shootist (
1976 Don Siegel).
He directed the final scenes of
The Night of the Following Day (1968) at the insistence of
Marlon Brando, as Brando could no longer tolerate what he considered to be the incompetence of director
Hubert Cornfield. 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." Boone returned to
The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York — where he'd once studied acting — to teach it, in the mid-1970s.
Boone was married three times: to
Jane Hopper (1937 – 1940),
Mimi Kelly (1949 – 1950), and
Claire McAloon (1951), by whom he'd a son, Peter.
In 1965, he came third in the
Laurel Award for Best Action Performance —
Sean Connery won first place with
Goldfinger and
Burt 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 at age 63 in
St. Augustine, Florida. His ashes were scattered in the ocean off Hawaii.
Filmography
Movies
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 (He was the voice of Smaug the Dragon) (1977)
Trivia
According to one trivia book, Paladin's first name was "Wire." 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 wasn't meant to represent his first name."
Further Information
Get more info on 'Richard Boone'.
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