Richard Boone (Paladin): The Westerns Traditional Cache

Richard Boone (June 18, 1917-Jan. 10, 1981), starred in over 50 films.  His father was a lawyer, and through him was a decendant of Daniel Boone's younger brother.  He was born in Los Angeles, Ca.  He attended Stanford but left early to try oil-rigging, bar tending, painting, and writing before joining the Navy in 1941.  There he served on 3 ships in the Pacific + was a gunner on torpedo bombers.  In most of his westerns, he was usually "the bad guy", so he didn't fare well.  He starred with John Wayne in 3 films:  "The Alamo", "Big Jake", and "The Shootist".  He is most famous for his TV series "Have Gun-Will Travel", where he played "Paladin"-a tough, but very educated and intelligent gunfighter.  It ran about 7 years.  The part was first offered to Randolph Scott, but he was busy with other parts and passed the role to Boone and history was made.  Boone first became a familiar face on TV in 1954-56 in the series    "Medic" where he played the role of a doctor.  He later moved to Hawaii and was the driving force to have the TV series "Hawaii Five-O"  actually filmed on location instead of Hollywood studios.  He was offered the main role of "Steve McGarrett", but passed it on to Jack Lord.  Incidentally, Lord went on to be on Boone's first episode of "Have Gun-Will Travel"-as a "bad guy" of course!