Richard Boone

• Birth Name — Richard Allen Boone • Born — 18 June 1917 • Birthplace — Los Angeles, California, U.S. • Died — 10 January 1981 • Place of death — St. Augustine, Florida, U.S. • Occupation — Actor • Years Active — 1947–1981 • Children — 1

Boone was born in Los Angeles the middle child of Cecile (née Beckerman) and Kirk E. Boone, a corporate lawyer and great-great-great-great-grandson of Squire Boone, frontiersman Daniel Boone's brother. 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 of Stanford prior to graduation and then worked as an oil rigger, bartender, painter, and writer. In 1941, Boone joined the United States Navy and served on three ships in the Pacific during World War II, seeing combat as an aviation ordnanceman, aircrewman, and tail gunner on Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, and ended his service with the rank of petty officer first class.

In his youth, Boone had attended the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California, where he was introduced to theater under the tutelage of Virginia Atkinson. After the war, Boone used the G.I. Bill to study acting at the Actors Studio in Manhattan, New York.

"Serious" and "methodical", Boone debuted on the Broadway theatrical scene in 1947 with Medea, starring Judith Anderson and John Gielgud; it ran for 214 performances. Next, he was in a production of Macbeth (1948). Boone appeared in a short-lived TV series based on the play The Front Page (1949–50), and in Actors Studio and Suspense, two anthology series. He returned to Broadway in The Man (1950), directed by Martin Ritt, with Dorothy Gish; it ran for 92 performances. 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.

In 1950, Boone made his screen debut as a Marine officer in Milestone's Halls of Montezuma (1951). Fox used him in military parts in Call Me Mister (1951) and The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (1951). He had bigger roles in Red Skies of Montana (1952), Return of the Texan (1952), Kangaroo (1952; directed by Milestone), and Way of a Gaucho (1952). His role in Kangaroo was greatly expanded from what it was in the original script. Elia Kazan directed him in Man on a Tightrope (1953). He had solid parts in Vicki (1953) and City of Bad Men (1953). In 1953, he played Pontius Pilate in The Robe, the first Cinemascope film. He had only one scene in the film, in which he gives instructions to Richard Burton, who plays the centurion ordered to crucify Christ. Boone also appeared in the second Cinemascope film, Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953). Boone made two films for Panoramic, which distributed through Fox: The Siege at Red River (1954) and The Raid (1954). He then left the studio, breaking his contract.

During the filming of Halls of Montezuma, he befriended Jack Webb, who was then producing and starring in Dragnet. Boone appeared in the film version of Dragnet (1954). Webb 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, and in 1955 received an Emmy nomination for Best Actor Starring in a Regular Series. While on Medic, Boone continued to appear in films and guest-star on television shows. He was cast in Westerns such as Ten Wanted Men (1955) with Randolph Scott, Man Without a Star (1955) with Kirk Douglas, Robbers' Roost (1955) with George Montgomery, Battle Stations (1955) with John Lund, Star in the Dust (1956) with John Agar, and Away All Boats (1956) with Jeff Chandler. Boone also guest-starred on General Electric Theater, Matinee Theatre (a production of Wuthering Heights), Lux Video Theatre, The Ford Television Theatre, Studio One in Hollywood, and Climax! Boone had one of his best roles in The Tall T (1957) with Randolph Scott. He co-starred with Eleanor Parker in Lizzie (1957) and was a villain in The Garment Jungle (1957).

• Illustration — Boone and Roxane Berard, who guested on Have Gun – Will Travel three times Boone's next television series, Have Gun – Will Travel, made him a national star because of his role as Paladin, the intelligent and sophisticated, but tough gun-for-hire in the late 19th-century American West. The show had first been offered to actor Randolph Scott, who turned it down and gave the script to Boone while they were making Ten Wanted Men. The show ran from 1957 to 1963, with Boone receiving more Emmy nominations in 1959 and 1960. During the show's run, Boone starred in the film I Bury the Living (1958) and appeared on Broadway in 1959, starring as Abraham Lincoln in The Rivalry, which ran for 81 performances. He occasionally did other acting appearances such as episodes of Playhouse 90 and The United States Steel Hour and TV movie The Right Man (1960). He had a cameo as Sam Houston in The Alamo (1960), a starring role in A Thunder of Drums (1961) and narrated a TV version of John Brown's Body. Boone was an occasional guest panelist and also a mystery guest on What's My Line?, 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 had his own television anthology, The Richard Boone Show. Although it aired only from 1963 to 1964, he received his fourth Emmy nomination for it 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.

• Illustration — John Wayne and Boone at the premiere of Big Jake, 1971 After the end of the run of his weekly show, Boone and his family moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. He returned to the mainland to appear in films including Rio Conchos (1964), The War Lord (1965) with Charlton Heston, Hombre (1967) with Paul Newman, and an episode of Cimarron Strip. The latter was the first time he guest-starred on someone else's show and he did it as a favor for the director, friend Lamont Johnson. "It's harder and harder to do your best work on TV," he said. In 1965, he came in third in the Laurel Award for Rio Conchos in Best Action Performance; Sean Connery won first place with Goldfinger and Burt Lancaster won second place with The Train. While he was 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 principal production 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, however, and the role went to Jack Lord, who shared Boone's enthusiasm for the state, which Freeman considered vital. Lord had appeared alongside Boone in the first episode of Have Gun – Will Travel, titled "Three Bells to Perdido". At the time, Boone had shot a pilot for CBS called Kona Coast (1968), which he hoped CBS would adopt as a series ("I really don't want to do another series," he said "but I've been battling for three years to get production going in Hawaii and if a series will do it, I'll do it."), but the network went instead only with Hawaii Five-O. Kona Coast – which Boone co produced – was released theatrically.

In the early 1970s, Boone starred in the short-lived TV series Hec Ramsey, which Jack Webb produced for Mark VII Limited Productions. It was about a turn-of-the-20th-century Western-style police detective who preferred to use his brain and criminal forensic skills instead of his gun. The character Ramsey's back story had him as a frontier lawman and gunman in his younger days. Older now, he was the deputy chief of police of a small city in Oklahoma, still a skilled shooter, and carrying a short-barreled Colt Single Action Army revolver. Boone said to an interviewer in 1972, "You know, Hec Ramsey is a lot like Paladin, only fatter."

Boone starred in the film Madron (1970), the first Israeli-produced film shot outside Israel, set in the American West of the 1800s. Also in 1970, he accepted an invitation from Israel's Commerce Ministry to provide the Israeli film industry with "Hollywood know-how". In 1979, he received an award from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin "for his contribution to Israeli cinema".

He starred in The Great Niagara (1974) and Against a Crooked Sky (1975) and supported John Wayne a third time, in Wayne's final film, The Shootist (1976). In the mid-1970s, Boone returned to The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City, where he had once studied acting, to teach. Boone did God's Gun (1976) with Leif Garrett, Lee Van Cleef, and Jack Palance. He appeared in The Last Dinosaur (1977) and The Big Sleep (1978), and provided the character voice of the dragon Smaug in the 1977 animated film version of J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Boone's last roles were in Winter Kills (1979) and The Bushido Blade (1979).

Boone was married three times: to Jane Hopper (1937–1940), Mimi Kelly (1949–1950), and Claire McAloon (from 1951 until his death). His son with McAloon, Peter Boone, worked as a child actor in several Have Gun – Will Travel episodes. In 1963, Boone was injured in a car accident. Boone moved to St. Augustine, Florida from Hawaii in 1970 and worked with the annual local production of Cross and Sword, when he was not acting on television or in movies, until shortly before his death in 1981. In the last year of his life, Boone was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador. During the 1970s, he wrote a newspaper column, called "It Seems to Me", for a small, free publication called The Town and Traveler. Some paper copies are in his biographical file at the St. Augustine Historical Society. He gave acting lectures at Flagler College in the city in 1972–1973.

Boone died at his home in St. Augustine due to complications from throat cancer on January 10, 1981 at the age of 63. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1949–1950 — Actors Studio — Various — 3 episodes • The Front Page — 10 episodes • 1950 — Suspense — Mercer — Episode: "Photo Finish" • 1954-1956 — Medic — Dr. Konrad Styner • 1955-1957 — Climax! — Various — 4 episodes • 1955 — Matinee Theatre — Heathcliff — Episode: "Wuthering Height" • General Electric Theater — Abraham Lincoln — Episode: "Love is Eternal" • 1955-1956 — Lux Video Theatre — Saxon/Vincent Giel — 2 episodes • 1956 — The Ford Television Theatre — Local Press Man — Episode: "Catch at Straws" • 1957 — Studio One in Hollywood — John Wesley Hardin — Episode: "Dead of Noon" • 1957–1963 — Have Gun – Will Travel — Paladin • 1958-1960 — Playhouse 90 — Various — 3 episodes • 1959-1960 — The United States Steel Hour — 2 episodes • 1963-1964 — The Richard Boone Show • 1967 — Cimarron Strip — Sergeant Bill Disher — Episode: "The Roarer" • 1971 — In Broad Daylight — Tony Chappel — TV film • 1972 — Deadly Harvest — Anton Solca • Goodnight, My Love — Francis Hogan • 1972-1974 — Hec Ramsey — Deputy Police Chief Hec Ramsey • 1977 — The Hobbit — Smaug

The authorities additionally record the heading Richard Allen Boone. His recorded language was English. He was the child of Kirk Etna Boone.

Boone then focused on films: The Night of the Following Day (1969) with Marlon Brando, The Arrangement (1969) with Douglas for Elia Kazan, The Kremlin Letter (1970) for John Huston, and Big Jake (1971) with John Wayne. Boone did some TV movies, In Broad Daylight (1971), Deadly Harvest (1972), and Goodnight, My Love (1972). Around this time he moved to Florida.

• Year — Title — Role — Notes • 1951 — Halls of Montezuma — Lt. Col. Gilfillan • Call Me Mister — Mess Sergeant • The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel — Captain Hermann Aldinger • 1952 — Red Skies of Montana — Richard "Dick" Dryer • Return of the Texan — Rod Murray • Kangaroo — John W. Gamble • Way of a Gaucho — Major Salinas • Pony Soldier — Uncredited • 1953 — Man on a Tightrope — Krofta • Vicki — Lt. Ed Cornell • The Robe — Pontius Pilate • City of Bad Men — John Ringo • Beneath the 12-Mile Reef — Thomas Rhys • 1954 — Siege at Red River — Brett Manning • The Raid — Captain Lionel Foster • Dragnet — Captain Jim Hamilton • 1955 — Ten Wanted Men — Wick Campbell • Man Without a Star — Steve Miles • Robbers' Roost — Hank Hays • The Big Knife — Narrator — Uncredited • 1956 — Battle Stations — The Captain • Star in the Dust — Sam Hall • Away All Boats — Lieutenant Fraser • 1957 — The Tall T — Frank Usher • 1960 — The Alamo — General Sam Houston • 1961 — A Thunder of Drums — Captain Stephen Maddocks • 1964 — Rio Conchos — James Lassiter • 1965 — The War Lord — Bors • 1967 — Hombre — Grimes • 1968 — Kona Coast — Captain Sam Moran • The Night of the Following Day — Leer • 1969 — The Arrangement — Sam Arness • 1970 — The Kremlin Letter — Ward • Madron — Madron • 1971 — Big Jake — John Fain • 1975 — Against a Crooked Sky — Russian • 1976 — Diamante Lobo — The Sheriff • The Shootist — Mike Sweeney • 1977 — The Last Dinosaur — Maston Thrust Jr. • 1978 — The Big Sleep — Lash Canino • 1979 — Winter Kills — Keifitz • 1981 — The Bushido Blade — Commodore Matthew C. Perry