Richard Boone

For the African-American jazz musician, see Richard Bently Boone.

Richard Boone
John Wayne and Boone at the premiere for Big Jake in 1971
Born	Richard Allen Boone June 18, 1917(1917-06-18) Los Angeles, California
Died	January 10, 1981(1981-01-10) (aged 63) St. Augustine, Florida
Years active	1949–81
Spouse	Claire McAloon (1951–81 (his death); 1 child) Mimi Kelly (1949–50; divorced) Jane Hopper (1937–40; divorced)

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 starring in 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. He was descended from Squire Boone, younger brother of frontiersman Daniel Boone. Richard's nephew is actor Randy Boone (born 1942); his cousin is actor-singer Pat Boone; his first cousin once removed is actress-singer Debby Boone (Pat's daughter). Boone graduated from Hoover High School in Glendale, California. He attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, but left prior to graduation and tried his hand at oil-rigging, bartending, painting and writing before joining the United States Navy in 1941. He served on three ships in the Pacific during World War II, seeing combat as an aviation ordnanceman and gunner on TBM Avenger torpedo bombers.

Career

After the war, he used the G.I. Bill to study acting at the Actors 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).

Elia Kazan used Boone to feed lines to an actress for a screen test for 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 in Milestone's Halls of Montezuma. In 1953, he played Pontius Pilate in the first released Cinemascope film, 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. The writer of Dragnet was preparing a series about a doctor for NBC. From 1954 to 1956, Boone became a familiar face in the lead role of that medical drama, Medic, receiving an Emmy nomination for Best Actor Starring in a Regular Series in 1955. While on Medic, he also guest starred as the character Everett Brayer on NBC's Frontier anthology series in the episode "The Salt War."

It was Boone's second television series, Have Gun – Will Travel, which made him a national star with his role as Paladin. The show was first offered to Randolph Scott, who turned it down but gave the script to Boone while they were making the film Ten Wanted Men The show ran from 1957 to 1963, with Boone receiving two more Emmy nominations, in 1959 and 1960.

He starred in three movies with John Wayne: The Alamo (as Sam Houston), Big Jake, and The Shootist.

During the 1960s Boone appeared regularly on other television programs. He 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 also had his own television anthology, The Richard Boone Show. Even though it aired only 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 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, which Freeman considered vital. Coincidentally, Jack Lord had appeared with Boone in the first episode of Have Gun – Will Travel, entitled "Three Bells to Perdido." Boone at that time had shot a pilot for CBS called Kona Coast that he hoped CBS would adopt as a series, but they went instead with Hawaii Five-0.

The six-foot-one-inch (1.85-m) Boone continued to appear in movies, typically as the villain, including The Raid (1954), Man Without a Star (1955 King Vidor), The Tall T (1957 Budd Boetticher), The War Lord (1965 Franklin Schaffner), Hombre (1967 Martin Ritt), The Arrangement (1969 Elia Kazan), The Kremlin Letter (1970 John Huston), Big Jake (1971 Michael Wayne), and The Shootist (1976 Don Siegel).

In the early 1970s, Boone starred in the short-lived TV series Hec Ramsey, which was about the turn-of-the-20th-century Western-style detective who preferred to use his brain instead of his gun. 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 had once studied acting, to teach it in the mid 1970s.

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.

Personal life

In his youth, Boone attended the San Diego Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, California, near Oceanside. It was there that Boone was introduced to theatre under the tutelage of Virginia Atkinson, who spawned theatre interest in many who eventually found their way to Hollywood. Robert Walker, another Academy graduate and member of the school’s theatre club, Masque & Wig, became a close acquaintance of Boone's.

Boone was married three times: to Jane Hopper (1937–1940), Mimi Kelly (1949–1950), and Claire McAloon (by whom he had a son, Peter) (1951–81 (his death)).

Boone moved to St. Augustine, Florida, from Hawaii in 1970 and worked with the production of Cross and Sword, when he was not acting on television or in movies, until 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 for the St. Augustine Record called "It Seems To Me." He also gave acting lectures at Flagler College in 1972–1973. In his final role, Boone played Commodore Matthew Perry in Bushido Blade. He died soon afterward of pneumonia while suffering from throat cancer in St. Augustine. His ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii.

Filmography

Film

• Halls of Montezuma (1951)
• Call Me Mister (1951)
• The Desert Fox: The Story of Rommel (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)
• Dragnet (1954)
• The Siege at Red River (1954)
• The Raid (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 (film) (1968)
• The Night of the Following Day (1968)
• The Arrangement (1969)
• The Kremlin Letter (1970)
• Madron (1970)
• Big Jake (1971)
• Against a Crooked Sky (1975)
• Diamante Lobo (1976)
• The Shootist (1976)
• The Last Dinosaur (1977)
• The Big Sleep (1978)
• Winter Kills (1979)
• The Bushido Blade (1981)

TV

• The Front Page (1949)
• Dragnet (1954)
• Medic (1954)
• Have Gun – Will Travel (1957–1963)
• The Richard Boone Show (1963–1964)
• The Mark Waters Story (1969)
• 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 of Smaug the Dragon) (1977)

References

• Rothel, David Richard Boone: A Knight Without Armor in a Savage Land 2000 Empire Publishing

External links

• Richard Boone at the Internet Movie Database
• Richard Boone at AllRovi
• Richard Boone at the Internet Broadway Database
• Richard Boone at Find a Grave