Bill Evans Weather Man in New York Did He Marry Again
Robert Horton, Handsome 'Railroad vehicle Train' Star Who Wanted More, Dies at 91
Robert Horton, a ruggedly handsome actor who institute tv stardom in 1957 as the scout Flint McCullough on "Wagon Train" but who resisted beingness typecast in westerns equally he pursued a parallel career equally a singer, died on Wed in Los Angeles. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his niece, Joan Evans, who said that he was injured in a fall last November and had recently been placed in hospice care.
Mr. Horton recorded albums and sang at the London Palladium, but he was never entirely successful in shedding the frontiersman paradigm. In his after years, he appeared at movie-western events around the country.
He played Flintstone from the first episode of "Railroad vehicle Train," in 1957, until the testify moved from NBC to ABC in 1962. The series, inspired by the 1950 John Ford motion picture "Wagon Principal," detailed the travails of people aboard a wagon train journeying from Missouri to California later the Civil State of war. Mr. Horton was the evidence's heartthrob, often given occasions to remove his shirt.
Starring with Mr. Horton was Ward Bond, who played the grizzled wagon chief, Maj. Seth Adams. (Mr. Bond also appeared in the Ford film.)
Onscreen the two had an almost male parent-son relationship, though they did non always appear together; episodes tended to feature one or the other in alternate weeks. Merely offscreen they oft clashed. Afterward ane peculiarly fierce argument, the two men vowed not to appear together on photographic camera over again. (They did weeks later, yet, when the script called for it.)
Mr. Bond died of a middle assail in 1960, and John McIntire became the new carriage principal. "Railroad vehicle Train" overtook "Gunsmoke" atop the Nielsen ratings in 1961.
Mr. Horton left the show when it was at the height of its popularity, turning down a lucrative contract because, he said, he wanted to avert condign typecast.
"There is a lot more to this business than just collecting your paycheck," he told The Sat Evening Post shortly afterward. "Getting rich every bit an actor and then sitting on an island someplace and drinking vodka is not my idea of how to spend my life. I'thou interested in using any talent I have."
Mr. Horton pursued a recording and musical theater career while he worked on "Wagon Train," making albums and performing in nightclubs. His advent at the Palladium in London drew "squeals and shrieks," one newspaper reviewer said.
He as well played the rainmaker in "110 in the Shade," a musical version of N. Richard Nash'southward play "The Rainmaker," on Broadway in 1963. Despite lukewarm reviews, the bear witness ran for well-nigh a yr, after which Mr. Horton performed in regional theater.
In 1965 he returned to westerns to star in "A Man Called Shenandoah," an ABC series almost a man with amnesia who roams the West searching for clues to his past. Mr. Horton said he accepted the function because he saw the evidence'southward story as more interesting than that of a typical western. "Basically it'due south a character study of a man in search of his identity," he told The Daily News of New York.
He besides sang the evidence'southward theme song, and his rendition was included on an album, "The Man Called Shenandoah." Though the show lasted one season, the recording remained his most pop.
Meade Howard Horton Jr. was born to a well-off family in Los Angeles on July 29, 1924. He was such an impetuous child, he said, that he never felt he fit into his proper Mormon household. He overcame operations for a hernia and an enlarged kidney to play football at a military school in North Hollywood.
He enlisted in the Coast Baby-sit in 1943 but was medically discharged considering of the enlarged kidney.
In 1945, a adventure see with a talent scout led to an uncredited part in Lewis Milestone's World State of war Ii film "A Walk in the Lord's day." Mr. Horton's parents were not pleased.
"I rushed in and said, 'Dad, I've got a office in this picture!'" Mr. Horton recalled. "And he said, 'That'due south probably the worst thing that always happened to you.'"
Subsequently earning a available's caste in theater arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, Mr. Horton moved to New York, where he struggled to discover work. He returned to California and appeared in the motion picture "Apache State of war Smoke" in 1952. Mr. Horton acted in six more pictures for MGM and appeared on television set shows like "The Lone Ranger" and "The Public Defender" before winning the office on "Wagon Railroad train."
He married the old Marilynn Bradley in 1960. She is his just immediate survivor.
Mr. Horton threw himself into the "Wagon Train" role. He studied the frontier era, drove the actual route the fictional wagon train took, and invented a dorsum story for his graphic symbol. He did nigh of his ain horseback riding on the testify.
He also often fought with the writers.
"I have to rewrite half the scripts," Mr. Horton told The Sabbatum Evening Post. "Otherwise I'd get laughed off the screen."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/15/arts/television/robert-horton-handsome-scout-on-wagon-train-dies-at-91.html
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