Richard Boone was a college student, boxer, painter and oil-field laborer before ending up in the U.S. Navy during World War II. After the war he used the G.I. Bill to study acting with the Actor's Studio in New York. Serious and methodical, Boone debuted on Broadway in the play "Medea". Other plays followed, as did occasional TV work. In 1950 20th Century-Fox signed him to a contract and he made his screen debut in _Halls of Montezuma (1951)_ , playing a Marine officer. Tall and craggy, Boone was continually cast in a number of war and western movies. He also tackled roles such as Pontius Pilate in The Robe and a police detective in Vicki. In 1954 he was cast as Dr. Konrad Styner in the pioneering medical series Medic, which was a critical but not a ratings success. This role lasted for two years, but in the meantime, he continued to appear in westerns and war movies.

In 1957 he played Dr. Wright, who treats Elizabeth for her memory lapses, in Lizzie. It was also in that year that Boone was cast in what is his best-known role, the cultured gunfighter Paladin in the highly regarded western series Have Gun - Will Travel. Although a gun for hire, Paladin was usually a moral one, did the job and lived at the Hotel Carlton in San Francisco. Immensely popular, the show made Boone a star. The series lasted six years, and in addition to starring in it, Boone also directed some episodes. He still kept busy on the big screen during the series' run, appearing as Sam Houston in the John Wayne epic The Alamo, and as a weary cavalry captain fighting Indians in A Thunder of Drums. After Have Gun - Will Travel ended in 1963, Boone hosted a dramatic anthology series, The Richard Boone Show, but it was not successful.

Boone moved to Hawaii for the next seven years. During this time he made a few Westerns, including the muscular Rio Conchos, but he was largely absent from the screen. In the 1970s he moved to Florida, and resumed his film and TV career with a vengeance. In 1972 he again appeared on television in the Jack Webb-produced series Hec Ramsey (years before he had played a police captain in Webb's first "Dragnet" film, Dragnet). Hec was a tough, grizzled old frontier sheriff at the turn of the 20th century who had to put up with a bright, eager young deputy who was schooled in the the most "modern" crimefighting techniques, which Hec had a hard time adapting to. The series lasted for two years. Boone continued working until the end of the decade but died from throat cancer in 1981.


Uncle of Randy Boone On a December 14, 1957, episode of "Have Gun - Will Travel" (1957), Boone found himself stripped to the waist by Apaches and bound spreadagle-style between four stakes driven into the ground. So vivid was this scene that leading men in other TV westerns soon found themselves in similar circumstances, most notably Robert Horton in "Wagon Train" (1957) Ralph Taeger in "Hondo" (1967) and Peter Brown and William Smith in "Laredo" (1965). According to Joseph McBride's "Searching for John John" (St. Martin's Press, 2001 - ISBN 0312242328), director John Ford was urged to cast Boone and Anthony Quinn as the Little Wolf and Dull Knife characters in Cheyenne Autumn (1964), as both had Native American blood. Ricardo Montalban and Gilbert Roland, who were of Mexican descent, were cast instead. In the last year of his life, Boone was appointed Florida's cultural ambassador. Enjoyed weight lifting. Traces his ancestry directly back to legendary frontiersman Daniel Boone.