Have Gun Will Travel
Have Gun Will Travel: “The Gladiators” …1960
Have Gun Will Travel…”The Gladiators”…Season 1 – Episode 27…Air date, March 19, 1960…Richard Boone as Paladin with guest stars Delores Donlon as Allison Windrom and James Coburn as Bill Sledge.
Richard Boone
Boone in 1967 film Hombre
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 and for the TV series Have Gun – Will Travel.
Early life
Boone was born in Los Angeles, California, the middle child of Cecile (née Beckerman) and Kirk E. Boone, a well-to-do corporate lawyer. His father was a descendant of Squire Boone, brother to frontiersman Daniel Boone. His mother was Jewish, the daughter of immigrants from Russia.
Richard Boone graduated from Hoover High School in Glendale, California. He attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, where he was a member of Theta Xi fraternity. He dropped out prior to graduation and went to work in oil-rigging, bartending, painting, and writing. He joined the United States Navy in 1941 and served on three ships in the Pacific during World War II, seeing combat as an aviation ordnanceman, enlisted Naval Aircrewman and tail gunner on Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers.
Career – Early training and work
In his youth, Boone had attended the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California, where he was introduced to theatre under the tutelage of Virginia Atkinson. After the war, Boone used the G.I. Billto study acting at the Actors Studio in New York. “Serious” and “methodical,” Boone debuted on the Broadwaytheatrical scene in 1947 with the plays Medea, Macbeth (1948) and The Man (1950).
Elia Kazan used Boone to feed lines to an actress for a film screen-test done for director Lewis Milestone. Milestone was not impressed with the actress, but he was impressed enough with Boone’s voice to summon him to Hollywood, where he was given a seven-year contract with Fox.
From films to television
In 1950, Boone made his screen debut as a Marine officer in Milestone’s Halls of Montezuma. In 1953, he played Pontius Pilate in the first Cinemascope film released, The Robe. He had only one scene in the film, in which he gives instructions to Richard Burton, who plays the centurion ordered to crucify Christ. When he was ordered to appear in another film for Fox made at the same time as The Robe, he ended his contract with the studio.
During the filming of Halls of Montezuma he befriended Jack Webb, who was then producing and starring in Dragnet, whose writer was preparing a series about a doctor for NBC. From 1954-56, Boone became a familiar face in the lead role of that medical drama, titled Medic, receiving in 1955 an Emmy nomination for Best Actor Starring in a Regular Series. While on Medic, he also guest-starred as the character Everett Brayer on NBC’s Frontier anthology series, in the episode “The Salt War”. He appeared in the 1954 Dragnet film based on Webb’s series. To read more go to the link below:
