Cheyenne - "The Empty Gun" - 6:19 pm Friday, November 28 on STARZ ENCORE Westerns (East)

John Russell (Actor) .. Matt Reardon

Born: January 03, 1921
Died: January 19, 1991
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, United States

Trivia: Two things American actor John Russell was not: he was not cinematographer John L. Russell, nor was he the Johnny Russell who appears as Shirley Temple's brother in 20th Century-Fox's The Blue Bird (1940). He was however, a contract juvenile at Fox from 1937 through 1941. Interrupting his career for war service, Russell emerged from his tour of duty as a highly decorated marine. Busy in postwar films and TV as a secondary lead and utility villain, Russell was given costar billing with Chick Chandler in the 1955 syndicated TV adventure series Soldiers of Fortune. Four years later, Russell (now sporting a mustache) was cast as Marshal Dan Troop on the Warner Bros. weekly western series Lawman. This assignment lasted three years, after which Russell became a journeyman actor again. John Russell was well served with character parts in 1984's Honkytonk Man and 1985's Pale Rider, both directed by and starring another ex-TV-cowboy, Clint Eastwood.

Clint Walker (Actor) .. Cheyenne

Born: May 30, 1927

Trivia: Tall (6'7"), sturdily built Clint Walker held down a number of macho jobs ranging from sheet metal worker to nightclub bouncer before settling on acting as a profession. Disregarding a slightly embarrassing appearance as a faux Tarzan in the 1954 Bowery Boys opus Jungle Gents (in which he was billed as Jett Norman!), Walker's official film debut was a tiny role in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956). He signed with Warner Bros. in 1957, where he starred in the long-running Western TV series Cheyenne. During his Warners tenure, Walker spent as much time offscreen as on due to artistic differences and salary disputes. After Cheyenne left the air in 1963, Walker continued to appear in rugged action efforts like None but the Brave (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and The White Buffalo (1976). Clint Walker's attempt to reclaim his earlier TV prominence resulted in the very short-lived 1975 series Kodiak.

Sean Garrison (Actor) .. Mike

Born: October 19, 1937

Audrey Totter (Actor) .. Martha

Born: December 20, 1917
Died: December 12, 2013

Trivia: An actress since high school, Audrey Totter was by 1939 a well-established radio performer. Signed to an MGM contract in 1945, Totter played brittle, no-nonsense leading ladies and femme fatales in such films as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and Lady in the Lake (1946). During her MGM years, Totter starred in the radio sitcom Meet Millie, but was contractually prevented from appearing in the TV version (she was replaced by Eleana Verdugo). As her film career waned, Totter agreed to sign on as a regular on the 1958 TV Western Cimarron City. In 1962, Audrey Totter co-starred with Stanley Holloway in the weekly sitcom Our Man Higgins; ten years later, she came out of retirement to play a recurring role on still another TV series, Medical Center. Her final acting role was on a 1987 episode of Murder, She Wrote. Totter died in 2013, just days before her 96th birthday.

L. Q. Jones (Actor)

Born: August 19, 1927

Trivia: What do actors Gig Young, Anne Shirley, and L.Q. Jones have in common? All of them lifted their show-biz names from characters they'd portrayed on screen. In 1955, University of Texas alumnus Justice McQueen made his film debut in Battle Cry, playing a laconic lieutenant named L.Q. Jones. McQueen liked his character so much that he remained L.Q. Jones offscreen ever after (though he never made it legal, still listing himself as Justice Ellis McQueen in the 1995 edition of Who's Who). A natural for westerns both vocally and physically, Jones played supporting roles in several big-screen oaters, and was seen on TV as Smitty on Cheyenne (1955-58) and as Belden on The Virginian (1964-67). Jones gained a measure of prominence in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably Ride the High Country (1961) and The Wild Bunch (1969). Turning to the production side of the business in the early 1970s, L. Q. Jones produced and co-starred in the 1971 film Brotherhood of Satan; he also co-produced, directed, adapted and played a cameo (as a porn-movie actor!) in the fascinating 1975 cinemazation of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, a tour de force that won Jones a Hugo Award from America's science fiction writers.

Cheyenne: The Empty Gun

6:19 pm - 7:08 pm, Today on STARZ ENCORE Westerns (East) ()

The Empty Gun

Season 3, Episode 12