Western actors
by Alybran | created - 27 Dec 2013 | updated - 02 Aug 2015 | Public101. Armie Hammer
Actor | Call Me by Your Name
Armand Douglas Hammer was born in Los Angeles, California, to Dru Ann (Mobley) and Michael Armand Hammer, a businessman. His great-grandfather, Armand Hammer, was a prominent tycoon and philanthropist who ran the company Occidental Petroleum for many decades. Armie's ancestry includes ...
102. Jack Perrin
Actor | The Apache Kid's Escape
Jack Perrin was born in Three Rivers, MI, on July 25, 1896. His father, a real estate investor, had an eye on the burgeoning prospects in Los Angeles and moved his family there when Perrin was about four. Jack literally grew up witnessing the birth of the film industry, which exploded there in 1913...
103. Jack Randall
Actor | Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Jack Randall was born on July 31, 1988 in Oxford, England, UK. He is an actor, known for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003).
105. Jane Frazee
Actress | Calendar Girl
A professional entertainer since the age of six, blue-eyed brunette Jane Frazee and her older sister Ruth Frazee had a vaudeville sister act and appeared in nightclubs and on radio together. They journeyed to Hollywood, but the act broke up when Ruth failed her screen tests and Jane passed hers. ...
106. Jennifer Holt
Actress | Buffalo Bill Rides Again
Jennifer, born Elizabeth Marshall, was the daughter of film star Jack Holt and Margaret Wood Holt; she had an older half-sister from her mothers' previous marriage, named Imogene and a brother, Charles John Holt III, nicknamed Tim Holt. She would later change her name to Jennifer for professional ...
107. Jim Bannon
Actor | Ride, Ryder, Ride!
Jim Bannon was a star athlete at Rockhurst College. After graduation, he became a sportscaster in Kansas City, and after 1938, in California. He began working as a radio actor and got small parts in movies. He was a movie stuntman in the early 1940s before starring in a detective movie series for ...
108. James Newill
Actor | Sky Bandits
Newill, one of Hollywood's largely unsung singing cowboys, began his career as a tenor with the Los Angeles Light Opera company in the early 30's. By the middle of the decade, he fronted the microphone as a vocalist with various society orchestras, including those of Gus Arnheim, Phil Harris and ...
109. Jimmy Wakely and His Oklahoma Cowboys
Actor | Swing in the Saddle
Jimmy Wakely and His Oklahoma Cowboys is known for Swing in the Saddle (1944) and Montana Plains (1944).
110. Jock Mahoney
Actor | The Land Unknown
Mahoney is of French and Irish extraction, with some Cherokee. At the University of Iowa, he was outstanding in swimming, basketball and football. When World War II broke out, he enlisted as a Marine fighter pilot and instructor. In Hollywood, he was a noted stunt man, doubling for Errol Flynn, ...
111. Johnny Carpenter
Actor | The Lawless Rider
Johnny Carpenter was born on June 25, 1914 in Dardanelle, Arkansas, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for The Lawless Rider (1954), Outlaw Treasure (1955) and Badman's Gold (1951). He died on February 27, 2003 in Burbank, California, USA.
112. Ken Maynard
Actor | The Fiddlin' Buckaroo
Studio publicity incorrectly puts his birthplace at Mission, Texas. Ken was a trick rider with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and later with Ringling Brothers and was also a champion rodeo rider. His movie debut, The Man Who Won (1923), was the first of many for this early cowboy movie superstar. ...
113. Kermit Maynard
Actor | The Fighting Texan
Kermit Maynard was born on September 20, 1897 in Vevay, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for The Fighting Texan (1937), Valley of Terror (1937) and Phantom Patrol (1936). He was married to Edith Jessen. He died on January 16, 1971 in North Hollywood, California, USA.
114. Kirby Grant
Actor | Gunman's Code
As a child, Kirby received a scholarship to the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Kirby won the scholarship as a violinist and singer, but he also dabbled as a sculptor. He would play a violinist in the film, I Dream Too Much (1935), which starred Henry Fonda. While his movie career was ...
115. Lane Chandler
Actor | Samson and Delilah
American actor who had a brief flirtation with stardom before settling into character roles and bit parts. Born in rural South Dakota (according to government records, though some sources say Walsh County, North Dakota) as Robert C. Oakes, the son of a horse rancher, he moved with his family to ...
116. Lash La Rue
Actor | The Dark Power
He looked so much like superstar Humphrey Bogart that character actress Sarah Padden asked if the two were related. LaRue said he didn't think so. After a long pause studying the young actor's face, she asked, "Did your mother ever meet Humphrey Bogart?"
Alfred "Lash" LaRue was born in Louisiana (...
117. Leo Carrillo
Actor | The Guilty Generation
Leo Carrillo was born on August 6, 1881 in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was an actor, known for The Guilty Generation (1931), The Cisco Kid (1950) and Crime, Inc. (1945). He was married to Edith Shakespear Haeselbarth. He died on September 10, 1961 in Santa Monica, California, USA.
118. Nell O'Day
Actress | The Road to Ruin
Born in Prairie Hill, Texas, in 1909, lovely Nell O'Day had the obvious breeding credentials to become a leading lady of westerns. She began as a child dancer in the early 1920s, later performing with the Tommy Atkins Sextet. This led to a part in the early musical King of Jazz (1930) and the stage ...
119. Peggy Stewart
Actress | The Runaways
Florida-born Peggy O'Rourke's parents divorced when she was very young. Peggy's mother eventually married a wealthy attorney named Stewart, and Peggy took his name. She grew up in Atlanta (where she developed the athletic skills she would later demonstrate in her many westerns for Republic Pictures...
120. Pete Morrison
Actor | The Desperate Game
American cowboy star of silent pictures. He studied science in school but dropped out to pursue a rodeo career. With some success, he was asked to appear in a number of film shorts, all before his eighteenth birthday. He worked for The American Film Manufacturing Company, but was soon signed by ...
121. Ray Corrigan
Actor | Pals of the Saddle
Ray Corrigan was a physical culturist and very good athlete. He began working in Hollywood, as a physical fitness trainer for movie stars. Bit parts in 1932 led to action roles in the Undersea Kingdom (1936) and The Leathernecks Have Landed (1936), the same year he began his role as Tucson Smith in...
122. Ray Bennett
Actor | Apache Drums
After spending his childhood in San Francisco, Bennett eventually moved to Los Angeles and was residing in Beverly Hills by 1930. From the onset, he had close ties to the acting profession, his mother (Ella Costillo Bennett) being a celebrated drama critic and author. His first acting was in stock ...
123. Ray Whitley
Soundtrack | Sleepless in Seattle
Ray Whitley was born on December 5, 1901 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. He was an actor, known for Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Giant (1956) and Land of the Open Range (1942). He was married to Catherine Kay Johnson. He died on February 21, 1979 in Mexico.
124. Reno Browne
Actress | Across the Rio Grande
American B-Western actress. Growing up in her native Reno, Nevada, she made her entree into films with small parts in films shooting on location in the Reno area. She travelled to Hollywood and got work as a trick rider and stuntwoman and eventually as a leading lady in low- budget Westerns for ...
125. Rex Allen
Soundtrack | Tomorrowland
Rex Allen started out as a singer in vaudeville, and sang on numerous radio shows before hooking up with a traveling rodeo show. He signed with Republic Pictures and became a popular singing cowboy, and was often paired with sidekick Slim Pickens. He starred in his own western TV series, Frontier ...
126. Rex Bell
Actor | Broadway to Cheyenne
Rex Bell was born on October 16, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Broadway to Cheyenne (1932), Lucky Larrigan (1932) and Rainbow Ranch (1933). He was married to Clara Bow. He died on July 4, 1962 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
127. Richard Martin
Actor | The Arizona Ranger
Richard Martin began working in films as a receptionist at MGM in the late 1930s. He began appearing in films while under contract to RKO in the early 1940s. Martin created the character of "Chito Jose Gonzalez Bustamonte Rafferty", the Irish-Mexican comic sidekick of cowboy star Tim Holt, in the ...
128. Rod Cameron
Actor | The Runaround
The well-worn phrase "Tall in the saddle" is certainly one easy way of describing (and perhaps pigeon-holing) leathery, wiry-framed 1940s and early 1950s western film star Rod Cameron, although he proved quite capable in crime stories, horrors and even swing-era musicals.
The 6'4" Canadian-born ...
129. Smiley Burnette
Actor | Galloping Thunder
Smiley worked on a local radio station and in Vaudeville after high school. Always interested in music, he was friends with Gene Autry and worked with him on the radio show "The National Barn Dance". When Westerns became a big draw with sound, the studios were always on the lookout for singing ...
130. Smith Ballew
Soundtrack | Magic in the Moonlight
Began in show business as a radio singer. In the early 1930s he became one of the first singing screen cowboys. He starred in a series of musical westerns for Paramount, and another series for 20th Century Fox. In later years he was featured in supporting roles well into the 1950s.
131. Sunset Carson
Actor | Santa Fe Saddlemates
An American cowboy star of "B" westerns who had a brief career in the 1940s, Sunset Carson was born with the decidedly unheroic name of Winifred Maurice Harrison (although he was generally known to his family as Michael or Mick) in Gracemore, Oklahoma. He moved to Plainview, Texas, as a boy and ...
132. Tom Keene
Actor | Plan 9 from Outer Space
Not much is known about the early life of darkly handsome "B" cowboy actor Tom Keene, who was born George Duryea on December 30, 1896, in Rochester, New York. However, he did arrive in Hollywood in the late 1920s after college studies at Columbia and Carnegie Tech and immediately made an impact as ...
133. Tom Tyler
Actor | Stagecoach
Popular American star of silent and early sound westerns and serials. Raised in Michigan, he went through a number of strenuous jobs (sailor, boxer, lumberjack, coal miner, etc.) before landing in Los Angeles and getting work as a movie extra and stuntman. His good looks and athletic physique (he ...
134. Hal Taliaferro
Actor | Flying Lariats
American actor who starred in silent Westerns under one name, then moved into character roles and bit parts under another. Born Floyd Taliaferro Alderson in Sheridan, Wyoming, and raised on a ranch in Rosebud County, Montana, he became an expert horseman. He served in World War I, then traveled to ...
135. Whip Wilson
Actor | Canyon Raiders
He was obviously handed one of those unique stage names, like Lash La Rue, in order for audiences (especially the kiddies) to immediately associate him with western heroics and the trademark he would be remembered for in films. Not one of the better remembered sagebrush heroes in today's world, ...
136. Bill Elliott
Actor | Across the Sierras
Born Gordon Nance in 1904 on a farm in Pattonsburg, Missouri -- a small town about 60 miles northeast of Kansas City -- the future "Wild Bill Elliott" grew up around horses. His father was a commissioner at the Kansas City Stockyards. and at age 16 Elliott won a first-place ribbon in that city's ...
137. Amanda Blake
Actress | Gunsmoke
Amanda Blake was born in Buffalo, NY, of English and Scottish descent. She and her parents moved to Claremont, California, while Amanda was still in high school, and she graduated from Claremont High. She enrolled at Pomona College but, due to her avid participation in community and theater ...
138. Michael J. Fox
Actor | Back to the Future
Michael J. Fox was born Michael Andrew Fox on June 9, 1961 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, to Phyllis Fox (née Piper), a payroll clerk, and William Fox. His parents moved their 10-year-old son, his three sisters, Kelli Fox, Karen, and Jacki, and his brother Steven, to Vancouver, British Columbia, ...
139. Christopher Lloyd
Actor | Back to the Future
Christopher Lloyd is an American actor with a relatively long career. His better known roles include drug-using taxicab driver Jim Ignatowski in the sitcom Taxi (1978), Klingon Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), inventor Dr. Emmett "Doc" Brown in the Back to the Future ...
140. Sharon Stone
Actress | Basic Instinct
Sharon Stone was born and raised in Meadville, a small town in Pennsylvania. Her strict father was a factory worker, and her mother was a homemaker. She was the second of four children. At the age of 15, she studied in Saegertown High School, Pennsylvania, and at that same age, entered Edinboro ...
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