Richard Boone
Have Talent - Will Act

Let's return to those thrilling days of yesteryear - for caricature, that is.

Rather than present - as the critics of CooperToons oft times point out - a caricature in a modern graphic manner that renders the character unrecognizable, this is pretty much in the style of a "classic illustrator's caricature" harking back to what some call the golden age of magazine caricature.

This is, of course, the American actor Richard Boone - as you can tell from the title. But the picture does not portray Dick as his most famous character. That was Paladin, a hired gun who had business cards that proclaimed "Have Gun - Will Travel - Wire Paladin - San Francisco". Given the chronology of the series - the 1870's and 1880's - that was as specific as a telegram was needed. Even as late as the 1960's, a letter was addressed "Ken and Flo" with no address beyond the name of a Quaint Town in the American Southwest and it reached them.

In Have Gun - Will Travel Paladin lived a life of luxury at the Hotel Carlton. But when summoned by a client - the telegram was inevitably delivered by one of the hotel's Chinese servants - Paladin would don his black outfit completed by a rig where the holsters had a chess knight embossed on the side. Then off he'd be on an adventure where he used his guns - he had a Winchester and a derringer (disguised as part of his belt) - to help the poor and downtrodden and oppressed.

Yes, although Paladin was clad in black - black shirt, black trousers, and black hat - he was a good guy. And you do wonder how he managed to pay for his high lifestyle given that a lot of his clients could barely make ends meet.

Not that some of the jobs Paladin took on weren't interesting in their own right. In one episode Oscar Wilde hired him as a bodyguard. On another episode he had to investigate the murder of a Hawaiian prince. And once he met an old timer who was digging for water - and struck whiskey.

Have Gun - Will Travel, we must point out, was fiction. There were hired guns who could be contracted out to solve problems - men like Tom Horn or Jim Miller - but inevitably their employers were powerful stockmen, magnates, and land speculators who wanted to drive homesteaders and small farmers off the land. These men shot first and didn't bother asking questions later. Tom, for example, killed a 14 year-old boy named Willie Nickell in Wyoming because he mistook the boy for his father who was a sheep rancher.

A separate Have Gun - Will Travel series was broadcast on radio with veteran actor John Dehner - who in addition to decades of radio work appeared in nearly 300 television shows and motion pictures - playing Paladin. Have Gun - Will Travel was unusual in that the radio show began after the television series started broadcasting. The radio program ran for two years from 1958 to 1960 and was arguably the last of the great old time radio series. The TV show was broadcast over six seasons, 1957 to 1963. For the time that was a quite respectable run.

But the character we have shown here was from one of Dick's last television series. That was Hec Ramsey, an aging lawman who was winding up his career in the Oklahoma and Indian Territories (the Indian Territory had been divided into approximately equal halves in 1890). Although rough on the outside, Hec was innovative and used high tech forensic methods - at least those that were available at the turn of the century.

Hec Ramsey was one of the four television movies that rotated on the Sunday Mystery Movie on NBC. Other shows were Columbo with Peter Falk, McCloud with Dennis Weaver ("Chester" on Gunsmoke), and McMillan and Wife (Rock Hudson and Susan Saint James). We must admit that Columbo was by far the favorite and also was broadcast as an independent series which lasted ten years.

The fictional Hec Ramsey was based loosely on real life Oklahoma lawman, Henry "Heck" Thomas. Heck began working as a deputy federal marshal in Indian Territory under the jurisdiction of Judge Isaac Parker, known somewhat unfairly as the "Hanging Judge". Heck's most famous case was when he was credited with the final apprehension of Bill Doolin at Lawson, Oklahoma Territory in 1896. Of course, the apprehension was effected by blasting Bill with a shotgun but by all accounts Bill raised his rifle when Heck told him to surrender.

Just as we saw that Hec moved on from being a deputy marshal working for Isaac to being an assistant police chief of the Oklahoma town of New Prospect (which doesn't exit), Heck became the chief of police of Lawton, Oklahoma Territory, now the largest city in Southwest Oklahoma. The city sits next to Fort Sill which is the last active military base that was founded during what have been called the Indian Wars and is where the Apache warrior Geronimo was imprisoned and is buried.

Heck was something of an anomaly. A good number of lawmen in the Old West themselves had criminal pasts and some literally would pin on a badge one year and be robbing banks the next. Sometimes they even pinned on a badge at the same time they were robbing banks.

Heck, though, always worked on the side of the law. As a young man he had been working as an expressman guarding a train shipment of currency when a band of outlaws waylaid the train. Heck managed to decoy the robbers and give them bogus loot. He was on the up-and-up.

Life of an Old West lawman wasn't easy though. You were traveling on horseback through what could be a harsh environment, having to deal with a not always cooperative clientele, and were living in an era where lifestyles included a diet of fatty and cholesterol laden foods with a minimum of vegetables as well as an widespread and unhealthy habits like smoking, chewing, belchin', and cussin'. After a few years in Lawton, Heck's health began to fail and he retired in 1909 and died in 1912.

It was five years later, June 18, 1917, that Dick was born to an affluent family in California. He attended Stanford University but dropped out to work at various jobs until he went into the Navy in 1941. After his discharge he used the G. I. Bill to study acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. Ironically he wasn't really interested in becoming an actor but wanted to be a writer. He thought that studying drama would help him learn to craft dialog which he found difficult to do. And yes, the story that Dick studied dancing with Martha Graham is true.

At one point Dick was asked to assist in the screen test for an actress where Dick's job was to read some lines. The film test only showed the back of Dick's head but his voice caught the attention of Hollywood director Lewis Milestone. Lewis invited Dick to Hollywood where he cast Dick in the war film Halls of Montezuma. Although he didn't immediately shoot to stardom, Dick was recognized as a good solid and able actor.

Throughout his career Dick didn't do a lot of stage work (he first appeared in the Greek play Medea as a soldier). But one production of note was The Rivalry which ran on Broadway in 1959. Here Dick played Abraham Lincoln and his rival - Stephen Douglas, of course - was portrayed by Martin Gabel. Martin is best known to game show fans as a semi-regular panelist on What's My Line where he managed entertaining rapport with the full time panelist (and his wife) Arlene Francis. When the play was running on Broadway, Dick would sometime make guest appearances on the show as well.

There was a somewhat oblique connection with What's My Line and Dick. The show's host - John Charles Daly - was a journalist by profession but had also a role in the early television series, The Front Page, which was based on a popular play about the newspaper business by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. And one of the semi-regulars who gave acting tips to John was Richard Boone.

Although most famous for his western shows and films, Dick appeared in other guises. Many swords-and-sandals buffs remember The Robe but forget that Dick played the big baddie Pontius Pilate.

Dick was in fact one of the actors who could play a good guy or bad guy with equal savoir-faire. And in a lot of ways, he was better as a bad guy as witnessed in the movies The Shootist, Big Jake, and especially Hombre.

Dick appeared in several series before Have Gun - Will Travel. His first starring role was as Dr. Konrad Styner in Medic. Dick was the narrator although he didn't always appear on screen. After Have Gun - Will Travel, he starred in an "anthology" series, The Richard Boone Show. It lasted only one season although it was actually quite good.

With his deep gruff voice, Dick was a natural for voice work although he didn't do a lot of it. But true Lord of the Rings buffs remember that Dick provided the voice of Smaug in the animated television special The Hobbit in 1977. It featured other big name celebrities like Orson Bean (Bilbo), John Huston (Gandalf), and Otto Preminger (the Elvenking). Folk singer Glenn Yarbrough was the Balladeer.

As far as being a caricature subject, Dick is pretty good. Long faces are generally easier to caricature than round chubby ones as the exaggeration is more straightforward. Also Dick's craggy features help facilitate getting a likeness. It's common in beginning portrait classes to have the first model be a man since rugged, sharp outlines are easier to copy than the smooth gentle contours more typical of the ladies.

Dick finally moved to Florida in the 1970's. But he didn't retire and remained active in local and state theater productions - which was a big plus for the playhouses. Sadly, Dick died at the early age of 63, on January 10, 1981.

References

Richard Boone: A Knight Without Armor in a Savage Land, David Rothel, Empire Publishing, 2001.

"Richard Boone", Internet Movie Data Base.

"Hec Ramsey", Internet Movie Data Base.

"Have Gun Will Travel", Internet Archive.

"San Francisco, 1875...the Carlton Hotel...headquarters of the man called Paladin...", Ivan Shreve, Jr., Thrilling Days of Yesteryear Archive, Sunday, February 15, 2004

Heck Thomas, Frontier Marshal, Glenn Shirley, Chilton Company, 1962.

"Henry Andrew 'Heck' Thomas (1850-1912)", Bill Corbett Northeastern State University, The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, March 20, 2017.

"Heck Thomas - Tough Law in Indian Territory", Kathy Weiser, Legends of America, April 2017.

"The Hobbit", Internet Movie Data Base.

 

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