Right on the Mark!

When we profile an actor in The Underworld, it's often due to his handsome looks rather than for any Herculean acting talent and today is no exception. However, what today's featured performer had in addition to boyishly adorable features was a well-placed heart with a desire to be a constructive role model to others. And he certainly wasn't a bad actor. He just never made significant enough inroads in that field to sustain a lasting career (and there was more than a little stigma left over from his most famous part!) We refer to 1960s dreamboat Mark Goddard.

Born Charles Goddard on July 24th, 1936 in Lowell, Massachusetts, he was the last of five children born to his parents. Always an athletic young man (and six feet tall), he helped bring state-level glory to both his high school baseball and basketball teams. He even toyed with the idea of pursuing a basketball career, but after a stint in the U.S. Army, he turned to the idea of acting instead, no doubt thanks to his lean, good looks.

Two years in to his studies at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City, he opted to head for Los Angeles, California where the promise of television and film work seemed more likely. This was 1959, when westerns ruled the television airwaves and though young Goddard had practically no experience with horses, his healthy physique could support the cowboy drag with ease. After being in town only three weeks, having brazenly called contacts he didn't know and headed to movie lots without an appointment, he got lucky.

One of his first gigs was a guest spot on Chuck Connors' The Rifleman. He then caught the eye of producer Aaron Spelling who was producing his very first series (of many, many to come), a western called Johnny Ringo. Spelling wanted a young deputy to play opposite the series' star, singer/actor Don Durant, and settled on the novice actor.

Upon the advice of Chuck Connors (perhaps due to his TV son's character name of Mark McCain, played by Johnny Crawford), Charles Goddard had adopted the new name of Mark Goddard. Thus, Durant, Goddard and Karen Sharpe began starring in what was a reasonably successful show. (Sharpe was fired about halfway through the season in a dispute with Spelling over playing the character her way, as a gutsy tomboy, or his way, as a delicate lady.)

Even though ratings for the series were decent, the glut of westerns on television (thirty on the air at this time!) caused the program's sponsor to pull the plug on it and support a sitcom in its place. All was well, though, because he now had experience and contacts. He did several guest appearances on shows including an installment of The DuPont Show which costarred Myrna Loy, The Chevy Mystery Show with Walter Slezak, Nick Adams' The Rebel and an episode of Zane Grey Theater opposite Tuesday Weld (as shown here.)

Even better, he was signed on for the second season of an existing series called The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor. The series starred former movie superstar Taylor and was undergoing a cast shake-up, which left room for an additional character. Goddard joined Taylor and fellow costar Tige Andrews (later to costar on The Mod Squad) and, for one season, Russell Thorson, who departed in 1961.

Do you know who he's posing with in this publicity shot from The Detectives?  It's Donna Douglas, prior to her embodying (for all time, apparently!) Ellie Mae Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies!

Goddard was with the show from 1960 to 1962, the third and final season being an hour-long program instead of thirty minutes. Adam West joined the show during that season as well. Goddard next filmed a semi-musical, Desilu-produced TV pilot with Ethel Merman called Maggie Brown, about a single mother who operates a South Pacific-set nightclub frequented by sailors (sign me up!), but it didn't come to fruition.

In 1961, Goddard married Marcia Rogers and the two proceeded to have two children together. They generally seemed a happy couple and were socially active amongst their peer group in Tinseltown. They were particularly close to a starlet named Karyn Kupcinet who was a busy TV actress in the late-'50s and early-'60s and who was dating fellow actor Andrew Prine.

Unfortunately, Kupcinet (seen here with a young James Caan) was a very troubled young lady with a propensity for diet pill abuse and a roller-coaster relationship with Prine, who was not as on-board with monogamy in their relationship as she was. She struggled with depression and anxiety over her obsession with her weight and with Prine until one day Goddard and his wife found her dead in her apartment! She was nude and seemed to have been strangled.

Countless theories popped up about it; everything from an accident occurring during a nude dance to a mob hit in relation to the Kennedy assassination. Her autopsy was reportedly mishandled by a coroner with a drinking problem. Prine was also questioned. The case, however, was never solved and remains that way to this day.

Goddard was a frequent guest star on many of the hit TV shows of the time, in a variety of genres. He did Burke's Law, The Beverly Hillbillies, The Bill Dana Show, The Virginian, Gunsmoke, Perry Mason and The Fugitive. He also landed yet another regular series role, this time on the sitcom Many Happy Returns, as the son-in-law of a fussbudgety return department store clerk played by John McGiver. As shown here, Elinor Donahue played his wife. The show only made it one season from 1964-1965.

A first for Goddard came in 1965 when he made his debut on the big screen. The bad news is that it was in the trifling Disney comedy The Monkey's Uncle, starring Tommy Kirk and Annette Funicello (and a chimpanzee!) The film was a hit with kids, but added little, if any, luster his career.

A more provocative part came his way that same year in A Rage to Live, all about the struggles of a nymphomaniac (played by Suzanne Pleshette) who is deflowered as a teen by one of her brother's friends (played by Goddard) and decides she likes it! She proceeds to attract a variety of men from Bradford Dillman to Peter Graves to Ben Gazarra.

Goddard's appalled mother in the film was played by Brett Somers, who would later go on to fame as a regular panelist on Match Game. His horny, sometimes rude character gave him a chance to play something different than the idealistic good guys he'd come to portray most often. You can read more about this deliciously faux-dirty movie here in a profile I did on it a while back.

Any further immediate forays into the movie business would have to wait, however. He had agreed to costar in a pilot for still another TV series and this one would not only be picked up, but would run three seasons and, more importantly, become a cult culture touchstone that survives vigorously to this day. The pilot was called “Space Family Robison,” a riff on the Robert Louis Stevenson classic novel Swiss Family Robinson, and concerned a father and mother with three children who depart the Earth in a spaceship along with one fellow astronaut (Goddard) only to be stranded in outer space, unable to return home.

After the pilot was shot, it was determined that there should be an antagonist on board who could be part of the series to provide conflict. So the pilot was re-shot with the addition of Jonathan Harris as a crafty saboteur named Dr. Smith. It was also renamed Lost in Space. Because all of the billing for the show had been contracted previously, Harris suggested and obtained “Special Guest Star” billing for the run of the show, the chief stars being Guy Williams and June Lockhart.

From the start, Goddard regretted signing on to the show since he was on the threshold of finally obtaining a movie career, but it turned out to be a success. Ironically, even though his own role and that of the other adult stars wound up being shunted to one side in order to showcase Harris, child actor Billy Mumy and the famous Robot, he found himself becoming extremely fond of the literate, articulate and flamboyant Harris. They would become lifelong friends. (Harris' character, a highly effeminate variation of Clifton Webb with a dollop of Martita Hunt tossed in, could not have come off as more gay, though the actor himself was reportedly not so.)

Goddard was paired often with the eldest child of the Robinson family, played by Marta Kristin. As a youngster watching the series in reruns, I couldn't quite decide if I wanted to strangle Kristin out of jealously or simply be her so I could cling to the delectable Goddard every time something threatening happened. They certainly made an attractive couple (and their romantic relationship was downplayed more and more as the series progressed, resulting in practically nothing by the end.)

Now we know that this below is absolutely nothing more than a suggestive fold in the trouser leg of Mr. Goddard's and not a representation of Mark Jr., but isn't it fun to momentarily presume otherwise? (Click to, er, enlarge! LOL)

Lost in Space began in black and white, with a comparatively serious and sinister tone, but in its second season switched to color. The clothing of the actors thus became almost comically garish, with plenty of bright orange, pink, yellow, green and rust velour in various combinations. It took quite a man to pull off some of these looks and Goddard succeeded on that count.

Still, with Harris, Mumy and the Robot (who was regularly insulted by Harris in a never-ending series of alliterative ad-libs such as “Nickel-plated Nincompoop” or “Miserable Mass of Metal”) stealing 90% of the focus, Goddard's contributions, like the others, became more and more negligible.

During one of the hiatuses of Space, Goddard accepted a film role which afforded him something different to do rather than yell at the scheming Harris or fend off “killer vegetables” (Lost in Space had begun to devolve to that level.) The Love-Ins was a thinly-veiled (yet enhanced) rendition of the LSD-espousing Dr. Timothy Leary.

Richard Todd played the lead, James MacArthur (Danno of Hawaii 5-O fame) and Susan Oliver were a couple of his followers and Goddard was one of the chief drug dealers who is enmeshed in the “far-out” and “groovy” storyline (which is filtered through the staid sensibilities of Columbia Pictures versus any other gritty independent company.) Needless to say, this movie did not signal a new era in Goddard's cinematic career.

In the wake of Lost in Space's cancellation (in 1968), Goddard and Marcia were divorced after eight years of marriage. He also returned to the occasional TV guest role such as on The Mod Squad (shown at right) and on Adam-12 (a special episode in which he played, in flashback, Martin Milner's best friend, an officer who is killed in the line of duty.) That was in 1970 and his career momentum slowed considerably after that. He remarried in 1970 as well, to actress Susan Anspach, then on a roll from Five Easy Pieces.

He took a minor, unbilled role in the 1972 Woody Allen film Play it Again, Sam (in which Anspach had a bigger part), but didn't work on screen again until the 1974 TV-movie The Death Squad. Here, he joined Robert Forster, Claude Akins and Melvyn Douglas in a story about vigilante policemen who have been killing criminals who in their estimation weren't dealt the proper hand of justice by the court system. The project was a swiftly-made cash-in on Clint Eastwood's Magnum Force, which was on the verge of release (and, in fact, came out two weeks before this telefilm aired.)

Again, he made ends meet with plenty of guest work on shows like Barnaby Jones, Petrocelli, Switch, The Streets of San Francisco and Quincy, M.E. Then he took part in what is surely one of the most unusual blips on his resume. Still tan, lean and handsome, he took a featured (but non-singing) role in the 1977 Broadway musical The Act, all about a fading film star staging a comeback on stage in Las Vegas. The star was portrayed by none other than Liza Minnelli, who won a Tony for her work (despite plenty of absences and uneven behavior during those heady, Studio 54 days.) The overpriced show ran for 233 performances, but was incapable of making back its money. (He almost has a Billy Crystal thing going on here!)

By 1978, his marriage to Anspach was over. (The split may or may not have had to do with Anspach having a child that she later claimed to belong to her Easy Pieces costar Jack Nicholson!) Goddard did take a supporting part in an oddball 1978 thriller called Blue Sunshine, which starred Zalman King (later to enjoy a measure of success directing a series of Red Shoe Diaries softcore movies.)

It concerned the aftermath when some 1960s hippies had taken some LSD in their youth only to wind up a decade later losing their hair and morphing into zombie-like killers! Goddard played a politician who was in danger of flipping out any moment thanks to his prior drug use. The generally obscure, low-budget movie retains a cult following these days.

During this catch as catch can phase of his life, he popped up on Benson, B.J. and the Bear and also played the bad guy (albeit a rather tame one) in the craptacular mess Roller Boogie (1979.) He portrayed a shifty land developer who wants to buy up a Venice beach roller rink, much to the dismay of Linda Blair (yes, that Linda Blair) and her spandex and satin-clad cronies. After taking nearly an hour to show up in the 103-minute film, he is ultimately fended off with (I'm not making this up) projectile fruit...

Understandably, considering the caliber of work available to him, Goddard welcomed the opportunity to begin appearing on daytime television. First came a stint on One Life to Live in 1982, followed by another on The Doctors in 1983. In 1984, a longer assignment came with a role on General Hospital, then the #1 soap opera on TV, in which he played a character named Derek Barrington (no doubt inspired by the #1 prime-time show Dynasty's Blake Carrington.)

After departing General Hospital, he played a guest role on Jake and the Fatman and then did something rather unexpected. At age fifty, he went back to school in his home state of Massachusetts, earned a Masters Degree in Education and proceeded to become a teacher at a school for students with behavioral problems. At this stage in his life, he saw no use in waiting around for the scarce decent acting gigs that might come his way and was determined to do something positive and fulfilling.

Having costarred in one of science-fiction television's most enduring favorites, there was no chance he was going to be completely forgotten, but he was anonymous enough to the younger generation of students for his fame not to be too much of a distraction. He also began to make the rounds at various conventions and fan events in his off time, frequently appearing with Marta Kristin once again. In 1990, he married for a third time to a lady he remains with to this day.

In 1998, renewed interest in Lost in Space came about thanks to a big screen remake (you know, how every conceivable TV show under the sun was being re-envisioned as a feature film? Usually a shitty one...) He was approached to make a cameo appearance along with all of his surviving costars and he did, as a General. Mumy, however, was bumped out of his cameo when it was declared that having him play his old character as a grown-up would be too distracting and then-eighty-four year-old Harris flatly refused the entire enterprise, proclaiming, “I will have you know I have never done a walk-on or bit part in my life! And I do not intend to start.” Goddard's role was taken on in this new version by...  Matt LeBlanc...

Also in 1998, a retrospective special called Lost in Space Forever was done in which Harris and Mumy reprised their roles (along with the Robot, naturally) and the rest of the cast, including Goddard, reminisced about their time on Lost in Space.

Having gotten his toes wet in the public conscience again, he took on a supporting role in an independent film called Overnight Sensation (2000.) In it, he played a washed-up agent who helps a novice writer drum up interest in his screenplay while attending the Sundance Film Festival. Sean Dugan (later to work on the TV series Smash) and Maxwell Caulfield were among the other performers in the little-seen film.

A final (to date anyway!) role came in 2010 with the obscure, low-budget movie Soupernatural. The story concerned the appearance of Jesus Christ serving soup at a church festival and the hubbub that occurs thereafter. Goddard was stunt cast along with a plethora of other “past their sell by date” stars such as Lou Ferrigno, Pamela Sue Martin, Dee Wallace, Butch Patrick, Paul Peterson and Kathy Garver (the last three former TV child stars.)

Today, Mark Goddard is seventy-six years old, but remains a slender, healthy man with a bright smile and a willingness to help others. Aside from the students who benefitted from his instruction over the years, he has a reputation among sci-fi fans for being a warm, friendly presence at various events.

He wrote about some of his life and career in a slim, 120-page volume called “To Space and Back,” which delighted as many people as it left wanting still more from him. Considering some of the huge names he rubbed elbows with, many of them not mentioned in this post, he probably could have penned a book twice as long! In any case, we adore Goddard for his kind nature, his sense of humor and needless to say his adorable, boy next door, good looks.

"Hey... You... GUYS!!"

This was initially going to be an idea for New Year’s Eve, a featurette on three different famous Guys with an added shot of Guy Lombardo at the end, but I decided I wasn’t really all that nuts about Guy Lombardo (!), so I put it off. Now, we shall instead take a look at three famous Guys from the heyday of Hollywood and we’ll begin with, perhaps the least famous of the three, Guy Stockwell.

Guy Stockwell was the slightly older brother of Dean Stockwell, a famous child actor who maintained a lengthy TV and film career and is probably best known for his long run on Quantum Leap. Guy and Dean began their career together as teens in a 1943 Broadway play called The Innocent Voyage and a few years they later made the films The Green Years and The Mighty McGurk as well, though Dean was featured while Guy was in uncredited bits.

While Dean’s career as a child star skyrocketed, Guy was out of the picture for more than ten years. However, he grew into a far more virile and handsome adult and eventually was able to win co-starring roles and an occasional lead. One break was as Gardner McKay’s sidekick on the TV show Adventures in Paradise for one season. He also took on many varied roles on the anthology series The Richard Boone Show.

Following this, he won a contract with Universal Studios and began appearing in major releases of theirs during the mid-to-late 60s. First up was a pairing with Charlton Heston in the medieval drama The War Lord, all about the feudal right of a Norman lord to take a local girl on her wedding night to another man and make love to her. In a nod to authenticity, all the men were given atrocious bowl haircuts. Stockwell, it must be said, bore his slightly better than Chuck, in any case.

After supporting Rock Hudson and Claudia Cardinale in Blindfold and working on the movie And Now Miguel, about a boy herding sheep as a rite of passage, Guy acted in a 1966 remake of the Gary Cooper classic, The Plainsman. He portrayed Buffalo Bill Cody to Don Murray’s (of Knots Landing fame) Wild Bill Hickok and Abby Dalton’s (of Falcon Crest fame) Calamity Jane. Rounding out the weird is none other than Leslie Nielsen in a beard, longish hair and cavalry drag as General George Armstrong Custer! With Beau Geste, Stockwell finally got the chance to enact a leading role in a reasonably major remake of another classic story. This time he was paired again with Nielson along with Doug McClure and Telly Savalas, of all people. An exercise in testosterone, there is not one female speaking role in the entire film.
Concerning the departure from England of a disgraced gentleman who then joins his brothers in the French Foreign Legion on duty in North Africa, Stockwell proved his onscreen virility with a whipping scene and a torture sequence in which he was buried up to his neck in the burning sand.

From here, it was back to supporting Rock Hudson, this time in Tobruk, and then playing against Robert Wagner in the golf drama Banning before re-teaming with Doug McClure (and demoted to lower billing) in The King’s Pirate. This was yet another remake (!), this time with the name changed from the original, Against All Flags. Doug does look more than a little goofy in this still from the movie.

Unable to catch a break, none of these films had much of an impact at the box office (in fact, most of them are all but forgotten today!) and Stockwell turned more and more to TV and supporting parts in lesser movies.

He became a frequent guest star on popular late 60s and early 70s series including The Mod Squad, The Streets of San Francisco and Quincy M.E. while occasionally landing a virtual walk-on in a film such as Airport 1975 (that's him behind Chuck Heston in the shades.) One of his last feature films was the 1974 cult flick It’s Alive, about a family whose new baby turns out to be a ravenous monster.

He would work, however, in TV projects through 1990 until his health began to deteriorate. A diabetic, he died from complications of the disease in 2002. Guy Stockwell is not well known, but he deserves to be known at least a little more than he is. His primary body of film work seems buried in a vault somewhere for the most part. My hunch is that those who get to see his films would wind up appreciating him, maybe even more than his more famous brother.

Next on our list of Guys is Guy Williams. Williams only worked on a fairly limited amount of film and TV projects, yet had two major successes, lending him iconic status among both sci-fi and adventure fans. Had things turned out a tad differently for him at one point, he might even have become an important western fixture. More on that later.

Born Armand Catalano in New York City to Italian parents, the lean, 6’3” darkly handsome young man peddled his own photos in order to ignite a modeling career for himself. It worked, too, and he became a success at it. Eventually, he began working in live TV and played small, often uncredited parts in feature films. He toiled away in this manner for several years until a fateful meeting with one of the entertainment business’s leading players.

Walt Disney was personally casting the lead in a television series based on the character Zorro and took a liking to Guy. Guy was, of course, tall, charismatic and good looking, but also had the requisite coloring in order to play the Spanish swordsman. Disney instructed Williams to grow a mustache, “not too long and not too thick,” which, coincidence or not, was very much like his own! Williams also brushed up on his riding, took fencing lessons and even learned to play the guitar.

The show was a roaring success, not only with the kiddie market, but also with adults of both genders. Williams was dandied up in sparkling clothes as Don Diego de la Vega, but then would emerge at the correct time as the dashing and heroic Zorro, carving a Z into various objects to make his mark. His visage appeared on everything conceivable, including a line of comic books.

The demand for the character as portrayed by Williams led the producers to forge several episodes into feature length films and play them in theaters here and overseas. For an entire generation of viewers, Zorro=Guy Williams.

When the series ended in 1961, he went to Italy to take part in the sword and sandal flick Damon and Pythias, in which he played Damon. Williams (who had suffered a violent horse-riding accident in 1953 that left his back scarred) never posed for shirtless beefcake shots, whether due to modesty or some other reason, I don’t know. Family photos in and around the pool demonstrate that he possessed a lean, healthy, hairy chest. Still, he managed to show more than a little leg in this film and very fine legs they were! He then continued to work in another Italian spectacle, this time Captain Sindbad, in which he sported a beard. The elaborate MGM-backed production somehow managed to look garish, lavish and horrendously cheap all at once, but it afforded audiences a chance to see Guy in color (Zorro was a black and white series.)

Returning to the US in 1964, Williams was hired onto the enormously popular western series Bonanza. Principal star Pernell Roberts, who played eldest son Adam, had decided to depart the show and Williams was brought on as a cousin before Roberts’ final episodes were shot as a way of transitioning. Then Roberts, who had bitched from almost the first day of being hired over the quality of Bonanza scripts, decided to stay a while longer (and continued to gripe!) which led producers to write Guy out after only 5 appearances. Thus, he was denied the opportunity to star on the legendary show.

Fortunately for him, Irwin Allen was planning a science-fiction series that was an outer space take-off on The Swiss Family Robinson (in fact, for a brief while, the original title of the show was Space Family Robinson.) Williams was cast as the father and head of the Robinson family on Lost in Space. June Lockart played his wife Maureen. The pair posed for endless publicity shots in their “oven ready” foil-like spacesuits! (This series also starred the thoroughly edible Mark Goddard as a fellow space pilot on board the ship, the Jupiter II.)
Once the initial pilot was shot, it was determined that the series needed an antagonist and so Jonathan Harris was written into a second pilot as deceitful stowaway Dr. Smith. Thus, Williams, who had always been envisioned as the lead of the show, eventually lost his standing (if not in the credits, then in the episodes themselves) as the series more and more became about the adventures of the endlessly mugging Harris along with Williams on-screen son Billy Mumy and the dryly humorous Robot, which was on board the lost spaceship as an aide.

The series ran for three seasons and very quickly turned from a rather serious adventure show into an increasingly preposterous and garish spectacle. At least it featured, not one, but two differing (and wonderful) theme songs by young John “Johnny” Williams. Guy and June were hardly the first or the last stars to have their series usurped by younger (or more captivating to the public) costars. See also Good Times, Family Ties, Family Matters and, to many people, Will & Grace.

One odd thing I noticed about Guy when watching him on some 1964 color episodes of Password is that he went to great lengths to cover up a small degree of receding hair above his temples. He arranged the sides of his hairline in a convoluted manner in order to create the illusion of a very sharp, straight-across line. If you ever see him in anything from that era, see if you can spot it!

Guy Williams never worked on a scripted TV show or movie after the 1968 cancellation of the show. He was a wealthy man thanks to some very keen business investments and had no need to continue working. In 1973, he visited Argentina and was stunned by the immense popularity he enjoyed there thanks to Zorro. Eventually, he moved there and became a prominent figure in their culture and media, beloved by practically all of its citizens. Sadly, however, in 1989 at age 65, he died of a brain aneurysm and was found dead in his apartment after about a week. He remains, however, a cult figure to many, there, in the US and practically everywhere else.

As Vanessa Williams always warbled, we went and saved the best for last. Our final Guy of the day is Robert Odell Moseley. What do you mean you don’t know him?! Perhaps if I tell you that his name was changed to Guy Madison, it will help. While it’s almost a certainty that you could stop anyone on the street under 45 or 50 and they would not likely know who Guy Madison was, most gay men worth their salt are quite familiar with the man.
A sailor on leave in Hollywood during WWII, Moseley attended the broadcast of a radio program and was spotted sitting in the audience by one of casting director Henry Willson’s assistants. Willson worked for Selznick International Studios and instantly gobbled up the young lad, placing him in a small role in the important film Since You Went Away. It was a bit part, filmed in one day, but Guy Madison (as he was named by Willson, who specialized in giving young actors catchy monikers such as Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Race Gentry and the like) elicited massive response from the audience. Letters poured into the studio asking about him, but he was already back in the service fighting in the war!

Having survived his tour of duty, Madison came back to dive into the heady world of (by this time talent agent) Henry Willson’s star-making machinery. He was taught everything from how to dress to how to walk, talk and stand. He was groomed in every conceivable way in order to provide maximum impact. Of course, Willson had an extraordinary original canvas from which to build upon. Madison was already darn close to physical perfection.
Around the same time, Willson was giving the same sort of buff and polish to a former delinquent who was now being primed for screen stardom, Rory Calhoun. Rory and Guy became lifelong friends. (If you believe Willson biographer Robert Hofler, they became much, much more than that! He details an incident that has them going at it like rabbits in the backseat of a parked car.)

Madison was put to work in another major film, this time in a featured role. Till the End of Time was about the readjustment to civilian life of three ex-GIs, the nominal star being Robert Mitchum. Madison was rarely, if ever, praised for his acting ability, but he was blessed with amazing good looks, which captured the public’s attention. His dreamy face and smoothed over manners went a long way in plugging any holes in his thespian talent. This shot of Madison and Mitchum from the film suggests an almost Brokeback Mountain quality that is not present in the actual movie, but it’s fun to dream, isn’t it?

Now ensconced at RKO Studios, one of the lesser places to be by this time in Hollywood, Madison was put to work in various movies, frequently westerns, which were very much in vogue as the 50s dawned and would be so for a long while after. In 1949’s Massacre River, he was cast alongside Calhoun.

Along those same lines, in 1951 he landed the lead role on the TV series Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok and it was a major success, lasting until 1958! He inspired many a small child to learn the difference between right and wrong and amassed a large fan following among kids from this role.

Frequently, in his off time from the show, Madison headlined movies that required little from him, aside from a heroic presence, and he didn’t tend to work with a great many major stars. He did have as his leading lady in 1955’s 5 Against the House, Miss Kim Novak. I can’t say she never had it so good since she also worked with the divine Clint Walker, but she and Guy do make a luscious couple. The heist movie is not considered a classic by any means, but considering Kerwin Matthews is also in it, it’s probably nice to look at.

Before long, Madison was stuck in tripe like The Beast of Hollow Mountain, a Mexican made monster movie flick and so, in time, he felt it necessary to move to Europe and take advantage of the money that was available there to American stars who couldn’t break through to the next level at home. Handsome salaries were being paid there to actors who could headline a movie that would do well in the various foreign markets.

He made the airplane suspense film Jet Over the Atlantic in the US and then spent the better part of the next two decades primarily working in a wide variety of movies produced by Spain, France, Germany and companies of other nationalities.

In the mid-70s, he returned to the US and did infrequent work including bit parts in films or guest roles on television. He appeared in the John Jakes miniseries The Rebels and even popped up on an episode of Fantasy Island in 1979. His final screen role was in the TV remake of Red River, a project that made use of several actors who had once been prominent presences in the western genre. Mr. Madison died in 1996 of emphysema. Married twice between 1949 and 1964, he had four children with his second wife. Whatever his true sexuality entailed, he nevertheless had legions of ladies and gents drooling over him during his peak years and more than a few new fans continue in that vein now!