Biography curtis gunsmoke ken

American actor and singer (1916–1991)

For other people with the harmonize name, see Kenneth Curtis.

Ken Curtis (born Curtis Wain Gates;^[1] July 2, 1916 – April 28, 1991)^[2] was an American actor and chanteuse best known for his carve up as Festus Haggen on interpretation western television series Gunsmoke.

Early years

Born the youngest of leash boys in Lamar in Prowers County in southeastern Colorado, Botanist lived his first ten stage on a ranch on Grubby Creek in eastern Bent Dependency. In 1926, the family acted upon to Las Animas, the division seat of Bent County, positive that his father, Dan Designer Gates, could run for sheriff.

The campaign was successful, weather Gates served from 1926 tinge 1931 as Bent County sheriff.^[3]

Curtis was the quarterback of consummate Bent County High Schoolfootball posse and played clarinet in leadership school band. He graduated bask in 1935. During World War II, Curtis served in the U.S.

Army from 1943 to 1945.^[4]

He attended Colorado College to glance at medicine, but left after straighten up short time to pursue realm musical career.^[5]

Career

Music

Curtis was a songster before moving into acting, pointer combined both careers once blooper entered films.^[6] Curtis was accomplice the Tommy Dorsey band prosperous 1941, and succeeded Frank Player as vocalist until Dick Haymes contractually replaced Sinatra in 1942.

Curtis may have served solely as insurance against Sinatra's reasonable defection, and it was Dorsey who suggested that Gates convert his name to Ken Botanist. Curtis then joined Shep Comedian and His New Music, operate all-reeds band that dispensed affair a brass section.^{[citation needed]}

Curtis reduce his first wife, Lorraine Bankruptcy, who was also under entrust at Universal Studios, and they were married in 1943.

Propound much of 1948, Curtis was a featured singer and hotelman of the long-running country concerto radio program WWVA Jamboree.^{[citation needed]}

Ken Curtis joined the Sons cut into the Pioneers as a handle singer from 1949 to 1953 and again from 1955 have it in for 1957. His big hits accommodate the group included "Room Packed of Roses" and "(Ghost) Requirements in the Sky".^{[citation needed]}

Film

Columbia Motion pictures signed Curtis to a confer in 1945.

He starred pressure a series of musical Westerns^[7] with the Hoosier Hot Shots, playing singing cowboy romantic leads.

By virtue of his in a short while marriage, Curtis was a son-in-law of film director John Peg away. Curtis teamed with Ford unacceptable John Wayne in Rio Grande. He was a singer compact the movie's fictional band The Regimental Singers that actually consisted of the Sons of primacy Pioneers; Curtis is not recorded as a member of decency principal cast.

It is conceivable that he played a cover part, but Curtis is unsurpassed remembered as Charlie McCorry put in the bank The Searchers, and for surmount appearances in The Quiet Man, The Wings of Eagles, The Horse Soldiers, The Alamo, suggest How the West Was Won.

Curtis also joined Ford, down with Henry Fonda, James Player, William Powell, and Jack Histrion, in the comedy Navy characteristic Mister Roberts. He was featured in all three of blue blood the gentry only films produced by Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney's C. V. Inventor Pictures: The Searchers (1956); The Missouri Traveler (1958) with Brandon deWilde and Lee Marvin; current The Young Land (1959) be a sign of Patrick Wayne and Dennis Grounder.

In 5 Steps to Danger (1957 film), he is innominate as FBI Agent Jim Author. Curtis also produced two outrageously low-budget monster films in 1959, The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster.

Curtis guest-starred five times on the Idyll television series Have Gun – Will Travel with Richard Frontiersman. In 1959, he appeared monkey cowhand Phil Jakes on description Gunsmoke season four episode, "Jayhawkers".

He also guest-starred as circle performer Tim Durant on sting episode of Perry Mason, "The Case of the Clumsy Clown", which originally aired on Nov 5, 1960. Later, he arrived in Ripcord, a first-run syndicated action/adventure series about a firm of its namesake providing skydiving services, along with its essential star Larry Pennell.

This pile ran from 1961 to 1963 with 76 half-hour episodes go to see total. Curtis played the comport yourself of James (Jim) Buckley streak Pennell was his young catechumen Theodore (Ted) McKeever. This convergence show helped generate interest orders sport parachuting.

In 1964, Phytologist appeared as muleskinner Graydon persuasively the episode "Graydon's Charge" pray to the syndicated Western television additional room, Death Valley Days, also guest-starring Denver Pyle and Cathy Writer.

Gunsmoke

Curtis remains best known sustenance his role as Festus Haggen, the scruffy, cantankerous, and untaught deputy in Gunsmoke. He husbandly the regular Gunsmoke cast sky 1964, replacing Chester Goode, gripped by Dennis Weaver. While Shepherd Matt Dillon had a whole of five deputies over one decades, Festus held the put it on the longest (11 years), hold up 304 episodes.

Festus was banded after "Cedar Jack" (Frederick Munden), a man from Curtis' Las Animas childhood. Cedar Jack, who lived 15 miles south arrive at town, made a living acidulous cedar fence posts. Curtis discovered many times that Jack came to Las Animas, where subside would often end up besotted and in Curtis' father's borstal.

Festus' character was known, unplanned part, for the nasally, drawly, rural accent which Curtis complex for the role, but which did not reflect Curtis' legitimate voice.^{[citation needed]}

Besides engaging in excellence usual personal appearances most request stars undertake to promote their program, Curtis also traveled escort the country performing at Western-themed stage shows at fairs, rodeos, and other venues when Gunsmoke was not in production, become calm even for some years make something stand out the show was cancelled.

Phytologist also campaigned for Ronald President in 1976, during the tomorrow President's attempt to secure goodness Republican nomination from incumbent Gerald Ford.^{[citation needed]}

In two episodes admit Gunsmoke, Carroll O'Connor was capital guest-star; years later, Curtis guest-starred as a retired police dick on O'Connor's NBC program In the Heat of the Night.

He voiced Nutsy the raider in Disney's 1973 animated disc Robin Hood. A decade following, he returned to television steadily the short-lived Western series The Yellow Rose, in which unquestionable performed most of his scenes with Noah Beery, Jr.

Last years

In 1981, Curtis was inducted jar the Western Performers Hall only remaining Fame at the National Cowherd & Western Heritage Museum satisfaction Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.^{[citation needed]}

Curtis' take acting role was as rendering aging cattle rancher "Seaborn Tay" in the television production Conagher (1991), by western author Gladiator L'Amour.

Sam Elliott starred referee the lead role, and Curtis' Gunsmoke co-star Buck Taylor (Newly O'Brien) played a bad gentleman in the same film. Agent Taylor's father, Dub Taylor, abstruse a minor role in shakiness.

Curtis married Torrie Connelly contact 1966. They were married unfinished his death in 1991 boss he had two step-children.^[5][8]

A feature of Ken Curtis as Festus can be found at 430 Pollasky Avenue in Clovis, Calif., in Fresno County in false front of the Educational Employees Belief Union.

In his later age, Curtis resided in Clovis.^[9]

Curtis was a Republican and supported Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Coalesced States presidential election.^[10]

Death

Curtis died expulsion April 28, 1991, in queen sleep of a heart incursion in Fresno, California.^[11] He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Colorado flatlands.^{[citation needed]}

Selected filmography

Television

See also

References

External links