Randy Boone, who performed the guitar-strumming singing ranch hand Randy Benton on the basic NBC western The Virginian, died Thursday, August 28. He was 83.
His loss of life was reported to The Hollywood Reporter by his spouse Lana. Further particulars weren’t disclosed.
Born Clyde Wilson Randall Boone Jr. on January 17, 1942, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Boone later attended North Carolina State Faculty in Raleigh earlier than dropping out and hitchhiking to California to strive his hand as an actor. His first gig was a 19-episode run on 1962’s comedy-drama It’s A Man’s World about three younger males dwelling in a houseboat on the Ohio River. A costar was future That Woman actor Ted Bessell.
With Man’s World canceled after simply 4 months, Boone was a visitor star in such sequence as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Wagon Prepare, The Fugitive and The Twilight Zone (within the memorable 1963 episode “The seventh Is Made Up of Phantoms,” he performed a Nationwide Guardsman despatched again in time to the Battle of the Little Bighorn), all earlier than touchdown his 70-episode 1964-66 stint on The Virginian.
The Virginian starred Doug McClure and James Drury, who died in 1995 and 2020, respectively.
Boone later mentioned that he was fired by producer Frank Value. “I used to be instructed that [Price] thought I used to be window dressing and wasn’t wanted on the present, however I really feel that I used to be wanted as a lot as anyone.”
Value died simply final week, three days earlier than Boone.
Following his two-season stint on the long-running The Virginian, Boone starred from 1967-68 on the CBS Western sequence Cimarron Strip alongside Stuart Whitman, Percy Herbert and Jill Townsend. He made episodic visitor appearances nicely into the Nineteen Eighties on such exhibits as Lassie, Emergency!, Kolchak: The Night time Stalker, Gunsmoke, Kung Fu, and Freeway To Heaven, amongst others.
On the movie aspect, Boone starred within the 1966’s Nation Boy, a few rising younger nation musician.
Boone left appearing within the late Nineteen Eighties and, in accordance with THR, labored in building till his retirement. Full data on survivors was not instantly obtainable.
