Rory Calhoun Biography

Fast Facts

• Didn't intend to go into acting, but Alan Ladd convinced him to find a screen test when the two encountered each other on a Hollywood Hills bridle trail
• Worked as a grease monkey, a logger in California's redwood forests, a hard-rock miner in Nevada, a cowpuncher in Arizona, a net hauler for fishing boats, a dump truck driver, a crane operator and a forest firefighter
• Quote: "You could say there were more B Westerns than A Westerns, but even so, I always enjoyed putting on the hat, strapping on the gun and feeling like a kid again․"
• Quote: "By and large, I suppose my image is Western․ If the two or three dozen Western features I made didn't do it, the 79 episodes of my television series, 'The Texan,' certainly set it․"
• Served time in the federal reformatory at El Reno, Okla․, for hot-wiring cars, but decided to turn his life around after his incarceration
• His theater credits include a London production of "Belle Starr" that ran from 1969 through 1970
• Best remembered for his western films in the 1950s and his role in the television series "The Texan․"
• His longtime favorite film was 'With a Song in My Heart," which he appeared in opposite Susan Hayward
• Wrote such novels as "The man From Padera" and "Cerrado․"
• In an episode of "The Simpsons" called "Two Dozen and One Greyhounds," supporting character Montgomery Burns says that a puppy that likes to stand on its hind legs reminds him of Rory Calhoun