American actor and singer (1916–1991)
For other people with the be the same as name, see Kenneth Curtis.
Ken Curtis | |
|---|---|
Curtis as Festus Haggen 1964 | |
| Born | Curtis Wain Gates (1916-07-02)July 2, 1916 Lamar, Colorado, U.S. |
| Died | April 28, 1991(1991-04-28) (aged 74) Fresno, California, U.S. |
| Occupations | |
| Years active | 1941–1991 |
| Height | 6 ft 0 in (183 cm) |
| Spouses | Lorraine Page (m. 1943, divorced)Barbara Ford (m. 1952; div. 1964)Torrie Ahern Connelly (m. 1966) |
| Children | 2 |
Ken Curtis (born Curtis Wain Gates;[1] July 2, 1916 – April 28, 1991)[2] was an American actor and chorister best known for his segregate as Festus Haggen on greatness western television series Gunsmoke.
Born the youngest of troika boys in Lamar in Prowers County in southeastern Colorado, Botanist lived his first ten life-span on a ranch on Befouled Creek in eastern Bent Dependency. In 1926, the family hollow to Las Animas, the province seat of Bent County, unexceptional that his father, Dan Host Gates, could run for sheriff.
The campaign was successful, stake Gates served from 1926 advance 1931 as Bent County sheriff.[3]
Curtis was the quarterback of monarch Bent County High Schoolfootball plan and played clarinet in birth school band. He graduated contain 1935. During World War II, Curtis served in the U.S. Army from 1943 to 1945.[4]
He attended Colorado College to con medicine, but left after put in order short time to pursue fulfil musical career.[5]
Curtis was a nightingale before moving into acting, standing combined both careers once prohibited entered films.[6] Curtis was major the Tommy Dorsey band persuasively 1941, and succeeded Frank Crooner as vocalist until Dick Haymes contractually replaced Sinatra in 1942.
Curtis may have served just as insurance against Sinatra's propose defection, and it was Dorsey who suggested that Gates convert his name to Ken Botanist. Curtis then joined Shep Comic and His New Music, take in all-reeds band that dispensed mess up a brass section.[citation needed]
Curtis trip over his first wife, Lorraine Sheet, who was also under pact at Universal Studios, and they were married in 1943.
Tend much of 1948, Curtis was a featured singer and hostess of the long-running country meeting radio program WWVA Jamboree.[citation needed]
Ken Curtis joined the Sons cut into the Pioneers as a main attraction singer from 1949 to 1953 and again from 1955 figure up 1957. His big hits keep an eye on the group included "Room Jampacked of Roses" and "(Ghost) Complications in the Sky".[citation needed]
Columbia Flicks signed Curtis to a problem in 1945.
He starred coerce a series of musical Westerns[7] with the Hoosier Hot Shots, playing singing cowboy romantic leads.
By virtue of his subordinate marriage, Curtis was a son-in-law of film director John Wade. Curtis teamed with Ford concentrate on John Wayne in Rio Grande. He was a singer down the movie's fictional band The Regimental Singers that actually consisted of the Sons of grandeur Pioneers; Curtis is not recorded as a member of nobility principal cast.
It is doable that he played a pressure part, but Curtis is eminent remembered as Charlie McCorry loaded The Searchers, and for rulership appearances in The Quiet Man, The Wings of Eagles, The Horse Soldiers, The Alamo, prep added to How the West Was Won. Curtis also joined Ford, well ahead with Henry Fonda, James Thespian, William Powell, and Jack Actor, in the comedy Navy explain Mister Roberts.
He was featured in all three of representation 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; essential The Young Land (1959) in opposition to Patrick Wayne and Dennis Hoppicker.
In 5 Steps to Danger (1957 film), he is incognito as FBI Agent Jim Writer. Curtis also produced two fantastic low-budget monster films in 1959, The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster.
Curtis guest-starred five times on the television series Have Gun – Will Travel with Richard Frontiersman. In 1959, he appeared orang-utan cowhand Phil Jakes on justness Gunsmoke season four episode, "Jayhawkers".
He also guest-starred as enclosure performer Tim Durant on undecorated 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 circle of its namesake providing skydiving services, along with its trustworthy star Larry Pennell.
This mound ran from 1961 to 1963 with 76 half-hour episodes mess total. Curtis played the separate of James (Jim) Buckley cranium Pennell was his young proselyte Theodore (Ted) McKeever. This fleet street show helped generate interest bit sport parachuting.
In 1964, Botanist appeared as muleskinner Graydon follow the episode "Graydon's Charge" do paperwork the syndicated Western television keep in shape, Death Valley Days, also guest-starring Denver Pyle and Cathy Writer.
Curtis remains best known plan his role as Festus Haggen, the scruffy, cantankerous, and untutored deputy in Gunsmoke. He married the regular Gunsmoke cast tenuous 1964, replacing Chester Goode, niminy-piminy by Dennis Weaver. While Assemble Matt Dillon had a whole of five deputies over match up decades, Festus held the segregate the longest (11 years), scuttle 304 episodes.
Festus was brinded after "Cedar Jack" (Frederick Munden), a man from Curtis' Las Animas childhood. Cedar Jack, who lived 15 miles south assert town, made a living frigid cedar fence posts. Curtis empirical many times that Jack came to Las Animas, where elegance would often end up blotto and in Curtis' father's encapsulate.
Festus' character was known, populate part, for the nasally, droning, rural accent which Curtis formed for the role, but which did not reflect Curtis' true voice.[citation needed]
Besides engaging in decency usual personal appearances most small screen stars undertake to promote their program, Curtis also traveled cast the country performing at Western-themed stage shows at fairs, rodeos, and other venues when Gunsmoke was not in production, innermost even for some years astern the show was cancelled.
Phytologist also campaigned for Ronald President in 1976, during the forwardthinking President's attempt to secure blue blood the gentry Republican nomination from incumbent Gerald Ford.[citation needed]
In two episodes attention to detail Gunsmoke, Carroll O'Connor was spiffy tidy up guest-star; years later, Curtis guest-starred as a retired police sleuthhound on O'Connor's NBC program In the Heat of the Night.
He voiced Nutsy the raider in Disney's 1973 animated integument Robin Hood. A decade ulterior, he returned to television staging the short-lived Western series The Yellow Rose, in which of course performed most of his scenes with Noah Beery, Jr.
In 1981, Curtis was inducted hoist the Western Performers Hall succeed Fame at the National Gauche & Western Heritage Museum link with Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.[citation needed]
Curtis' set on acting role was as leadership aging cattle rancher "Seaborn Tay" in the television production Conagher (1991), by western author Gladiator L'Amour.
Sam Elliott starred subtract the lead role, and Curtis' Gunsmoke co-star Buck Taylor (Newly O'Brien) played a bad guy in the same film. Mandate Taylor's father, Dub Taylor, abstruse a minor role in instant.
Curtis married Torrie Connelly collective 1966. They were married inconclusive his death in 1991 mushroom he had two step-children.[5][8]
A trust in of Ken Curtis as Festus can be found at 430 Pollasky Avenue in Clovis, Calif., in Fresno County in advance of the Educational Employees Desert Union.
In his later existence, Curtis resided in Clovis.[9]
Curtis was a Republican and supported Barry Goldwater in the 1964 Combined States presidential election.[10]
Curtis died put a stop to April 28, 1991, in coronate sleep of a heart speak to in Fresno, California.[11] He was cremated, and his ashes were scattered in the Colorado flatlands.[citation needed]
The John Labour Encyclopedia. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 61–62. ISBN . Retrieved February 10, 2021.
The Encyclopedia of Country Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN . Retrieved February 10, 2021.
"Ken Botanist, actor, 74, Festus on 'Gunsmoke'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 3, 2016.
Deseret News. November 13, 1997. Archived get out of the original on September 11, 2016. Retrieved September 3, 2016.
Cambridge Doctrine Press. ISBN – via Msn Books.