Guy Madison
Acting
Born 1922-01-19
Died 1996-02-06
Pumpkin Center, California, USA
77 credits
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Handsome American leading man Guy Madison stumbled into a film career and became a television star and hero to the Baby Boom generation. As a young man he worked as a telephone lineman, but entered the Coast Guard at the beginning of the Second World War. While on liberty one weekend in Hollywood, he attended a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast and was spotted in the audience by an assistant to Henry Willson, an executive for David O. Selznick. Selznick wanted an unknown sailor to play a small but prominent part in Since You Went Away (1944), and promptly signed Robert Moseley to a contract. Selznick and Willson concocted the screen name Guy Madison (the "guy" girls would like to meet, and Madison from a passing Dolly Madison cake wagon). Madison filmed his one scene on a weekend pass and returned to duty. The film's release brought thousands of fan letters for Madison's lonely, strikingly handsome young sailor, and at war's end he returned to find himself a star-in-the-making. Despite an initial amateurishness to his acting, Madison grew as a performer, studying and working in theatre. He played leads in a series of programmers before being cast as legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickok in the TV series Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951). He played Hickok on TV and radio for much of the 1950s, and many of the TV episodes were strung together and released as feature films. Madison managed to squeeze in some more adult-oriented roles during his off-time from the series, but much of this work was also in westerns. After the Hickok series ended Madison found work scarce in the U.S. and traveled to Europe, where he became a popular star of Italian westerns and German adventure films. In the 1970s he returned to the U.S., but appeared mainly in cameo roles. Physical ailments limited his work in later years, and he died from emphysema in 1996. His first wife was actress Gail Russell.
Date of Birth 19 January 1922, Pumpkin Center, California
Date of Death 6 February 1996, Palm Springs, California (emphysema)
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Filmography
— top 60 of 77
Acting
56 credits
Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theatre
What's My Line?
The Ford Television Theatre
The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok
Old Shatterhand
Reprisal!
The Last Frontier
General Electric Theater
Red Snow
When the West Was Fun: A Western Reunion
Till the End of Time
Drums in the Deep South
The Hard Man
The Ghost of Crossbone Canyon
Red River
Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood
Since You Went Away
5 Against the House
Kidnapped to Mystery Island
Legacy of the Incas
Son of Django
A Place In Hell
The Charge at Feather River
Five for Revenge
The Command
Hilda Crane
Payment in Blood
Hell in Normandy
Timber Country Trouble
Hell Commandos
The War Devils
Where's Willie?
Crossbow: The Movie
Bullwhip
The Beast of Hollow Mountain
On the Threshold of Space
Sword of the Conqueror
Marshals in Disguise
Return of Sandokan
Blood of the Executioner
This Man Can't Die
The Devil's Man
Women of Devil's Island
The Battle of the Last Panzer
Slave of Rome
Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven
The Matchmaking Marshal
Gunmen Of The Rio Grande
Reverend's Colt
Sandokan Fights Back
Superargo and the Faceless Giants
Massacre River
Adventurer of Tortuga
Border City Rustlers
Gentlemen of the Night
Jet Over The Atlantic
Other credits
4 credits
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