Actor.
Born in Los Angeles, California, U.S., 18 June 1917.
Died in St.Augustine, Florida, 10 January 1981.
Richard
Boone was one of the television
acting profession's gladiators,
a craggy, determined and almost
menacing figure among the actors
and directors who worked with
him. His uncompromising
commitment to his work often
brought him into conflict with
his fellow players and was as
well a constant source of
frustration to the directors and
producers who tried to control
him. That his work for
television eventually brought
him critical acclaim and viewer
popularity while he
simultaneously alienated certain
sections of the industry may be,
perhaps, the hallmark of his
genius.
In 1947 he travelled to New York
and joined the well-known
Actor's Studio (where his
classmates included such then
unknowns as Marlon Brando, Karl
Malden, Eva Marie Saint and
Julie Harris). He got his growth
as an actor in some 150 live TV
shows in New York between 1948
and 1950, after which he
returned home to California. He
is also reported as being a
regular on the CBS children's
program Mr. I. Magination in
1947 (when the program was a
local New York show) and also
appeared as one of the reporters
in The Front Page series
(1949-50) during its early days.
Back in Los Angeles he was put
under contract to 20th
Century-Fox and his first
feature film was Halls of
Montezuma, directed by Lewis
Milestone in 1950 (Milestone
would later be invited to direct
episodes of Have Gun-Will Travel
and The Richard Boone Show).
While at Fox he was also working
for Jack Webb in his radio
Dragnet when, still as an
unknown bit player, around the
summer of 1950, he did a single
radio drama called The Doctor
(written by Dragnet writer James
Moser). This radio
show turned out to be the
forerunner of Boone's first
starring TV
role, Medic.
By 1954 his Dr. Konrad Styner,
host, narrator and
frequent participant of
Medic (1954-56), which had been
created and written by
Moser, had made him a household
name. Medic employed
a dramatic-documentary
style, factual and educational
in content but with a
dramatic impact that few if any
physician centered programs
achieved until the advent of Ben
Casey in 1961. With Moser
writing and generally steering
the series, Medic developed a
highly effective
semi-documentary technique
similar to TV's popular Dragnet.
The program took its stories
from the files of the L.A.
County Medical Association, real
medical case histories showing
inherent drama. Boone's stolid
underplaying heightened the
dramatic force of the series but
there were critics and viewers
at the time who thought his
character too dour and gruff.
When Medic came to an end Boone
found other parts elusive;
although this had been his first
real doctor role casting
directors had come to see him as
a "doctor" character
and his strong screen
association with the role of Dr.
Styner left him typecast in the
"he always plays
doctors" file.
His most memorable TV role, however, was set in a completely
different genre and featured Boone as a 1870s San Francisco
gentleman-adventurer who hired himself out as a mercenary
gunslinger. As the impassive troubleshooter Paladin in the post
Civil War West of Have Gun, Will Travel (1957-63), Boone helped push the series to top-ten positions in the Nielsen ratings (numbers 3 and 4) during its first four seasons. The part was originally
offered to Randolph Scott, who at the time had other commitments.
After first turning down Boone for the role, CBS made a five-minute test film for New York executives still prepared to type-cast him as a physician--and then signed him to a five-year contract.
While Have Gun, Will Travel and Boone's popularity rose in the ratings and in the esteem of fans, his standing among people in the industry dropped significantly. His strict dedication to his work, which he also demanded of everyone around him, saw him all but legally take over the CBS production; scripts, actors, directors, even costumes, all had to receive his personal approval. From 1960 onwards Boone was particularly active in the series' director's chair, directing almost one in four episodes himself. "When I direct a show, I'm pretty arbitrary," he commented to TV Guide magazine in early 1961.
"If I have a fault, it's that I see an end and go for it with all my energy; and if I'm bugged with people who don't see it or won't go for it, it looks as though I'm riding all over them."
During this time of course he also continued appearing in multiple TV plays. Notable performances during this period came with David Shaw's acclaimed "The Tunnel" (1959; for Playhouse 90), in The Right Man (1960), for which he delivered a fine performance as Lincoln, and with his work as narrator for Stephen Vincent Benet's Pulitzer Prize-winning poem John Brown's Body (1962).
The Richard Boone Show repertory theatre idea was first proposed by Boone in 1960 to CBS. When CBS executives suggested that they might find a slot for such a program among their Sunday afternoon schedules Boone put the idea on a back-burner until he had acquired his "go-to-hell money", as he put it, from the millions he made during his years in Have Gun, Will Travel, and to a lesser extent from Medic. It was not until his idea received the enthusiasm and support of the distinguished playwright Clifford
Odets, the Goodson-Todman production company and NBC president Robert Kintner that the television repertory company series started becoming a reality. The Richard Boone Show (1963-64) featured a workshop of ten actors whom Boone considered the best in the business: Robert Blake, Lloyd
Bochner, Laura Devon, June Harding, Bethel Leslie, Harry Morgan, Jeanette Nolan, Ford Rainey, Warren Stevens and Guy Stockwell. Boone himself, of course, starred at times and served as the regular host. With Odets as the program's script editor the series' prestige was almost guaranteed. Unfortunately, after completing much of the preliminary work for the series, Odets died in August 1963. Before the 24 episodes had completed their run (and despite having just been voted "the best dramatic program on the air" in the 15th Annual Motion Picture Daily poll) the program was cancelled in January 1964. Boone took the news hard. It had after
all been a very personal project and--the result of a premature NBC press office release--he learned of his program's demise in a morning trade paper. Still, his anger was tempered by the knowledge that he was by that time already receiving $50,000 a year for 20 years after selling out his interest in Have Gun, Will Travel; he was also to receive a reported $20,000 a week for his now-defunct show, also on a deferred payment basis.
Richard Boone From 1964-1971 he lived a very comfortable life with his family in Honolulu, travelling to the mainland only for the occasional movie such as Hombre (1966) and The Kremlin Letter (1969). He also helped induce producer Leonard Freeman to film Hawaii Five-O in Honolulu instead of the intended San Pedro; Freeman even offered him the leading part of McGarrett which he declined. In 1971 Boone was offered the lead role in Universal TV/Mark VII's Hec Ramsey (1972-74) series (two seasons as one of four rotating 90-minute TV-movies). The program, about a grizzled
turn-of-the-century lawman with a fascination for the new science of criminology, was in its way, perhaps, a gentle monument to Boone's earlier TV performances: Hec Ramsey was Paladin grown older, with an accumulation of artfulness and astutness along with a stockpile of barely contained impatience.
The latter part of his career was taken up with such diverse made-for-TV movie plots and themes as the elaborate murder set-up of In Broad Daylight (1971), the espionage tale of Deadly Harvest (1972), the period private-eye spoof Goodnight My Love (1972), the Depression-era drama The Great Niagra (1974) and the rather sorry fantasy adventure The Last Dinosaur (1977).
With his dedication to his work in television Boone always gave an extraordinarily commanding performance, always straightforward,
always the centre of interest. -Tise Vahimagi
