“Have gun will travel reads the card of a man. A night without armor in a savage land”. Anyone who grew up in the 1950s would instantly recognize that as the theme song of the classic TV Western HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL that aired from 1957-1963. Its star, Richard Boone (1917-1981), was much more than Paladin. A real life descendant of Daniel Boone, he was a member of the famous Actor’s Studio in New York along Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and Shelley Winters. He wrote poetry, was a skilled painter, and even studied dance with Martha Graham.
Tall, craggy faced with a large nose and a powerful voice, Richard Boone was definitely not leading man material. He made up for that with a commanding presence and a unique ways of delivering lines that made his film appearances truly memorable. Late in his career, he lent his voice to an animated version of J. R. R. Tolkein’s THE HOBBIT as Smaug the dragon and was one of the best things in that adaptation.
Boone first made his name on the early 1950s TV drama MEDIC. It was a precursor to E.R. and lasted 2 years. Then came HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL for 6 seasons. It was still a top rated show when Boone quit because he had enough. His next project was a repertory theater series THE RICHARD BOONE SHOW. It won the 1963 Emmy award as the Best Dramatic Series but was cancelled after one season due to low ratings. After 8 years in Hawaii, he returned to TV in 1972 as the titular character in the Jack Webb produced show HEC RAMSEY.
His movie career began in 1950 with HALLS OF MONTEZUMA and ended, 47 films later, in 1981 with THE BUSHIDO BLADE. During that time Boone worked with many of the top names both in front of and behind the camera. Several of those films have attained the status of classics. In the 1950s there was VICKI (1953), DRAGNET (with Jack Webb – 1954), THE MAN WITHOUT A STAR (1955), THE GARMENT JUNGLE (1957), and I BURY THE LIVING (1958), a Stephen King favorite,
The 1960s started out with John Wayne’s THE ALAMO (1960). Other highlights include THE WAR LORD (1965), a medieval epic with Charlton Heston, HOMBRE (1967) with Paul Newman as a white man raised by Apaches, THE NIGHT OF THE FOLLOWING DAY (1968) about a failed kidnapping that features a pre-GODFATHER Marlon Brando, and Elia Kazan’s THE ARRANGEMENT (1969) with Kirk Douglas and Faye Dunaway.
The 1970s brought John Huston’s THE KREMLIN LETTER (1970) BIG JAKE (1971) with John Wayne and THE SHOOTIST (1976 – again with John Wayne), THE BIG SLEEP, a 1978 remake set in contemporary England with Robert Mitchum, Sarah Miles, and James Stewart, and finally WINTER KILLS (1979) a paranoid political thriller from the author of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE and starring a young Jeff Bridges. That’s a pretty good career. Once seen and heard Richard Boone cannot be forgotten.
The Capsule Critic 