Doug McClure

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Doug McClure bigraphy, stories - Actor

Doug McClure : biography

May 11, 1935 – February 5, 1995

Douglas Osborne "Doug" McClure (May 11, 1935 – February 5, 1995) was an American actor whose career in film and television extended from the 1950s to the 1990s. He is best known for his role as the cowboy Trampas during the entire run from 1962 to 1971 of the NBC western television series, The Virginian, loosely based on the Owen Wister novel.

Background

McClure was born in Glendale, California, to an English-born mother, Clara Elsie (née Barker) (1907–1997); she had moved to the United States in 1915 when her widowed mother married an American, Frank S Artman; Clara Barker was naturalised as an American citizen in 1918, and married Donald Reed McClure (1904–1965) in 1929. Doug McClure had an older brother, Donald Reed McClure (1931–2003). Clara McClure married Frank Clapp in 1971, six years after Donald McClure’s death.

Career

McClure’s acting career included such films as The Enemy Below, South Pacific, The Unforgiven, and Because They’re Young, before landing the part of Trampas on The Virginian – a part that would make him famous. He also starred in four other series:

  • (1) as Frank "Flip" Flippen on NBC’s western, Overland Trail (1960), with co-star William Bendix
  • (2) as Jed Sills on the CBS detective series Checkmate (1960–62) opposite Anthony George as Don Corey and Sebastian Cabot as Dr. Carl Hyatt
  • (3) in the sci-fi/detective series Search (1972–1973) in which he rotated the lead with Hugh O’Brian and Anthony Franciosa as a high-tech PROBE agent, and
  • (4) in the series Out of This World (1987–1991) as Mayor Kyle Applegate.

McClure had a minor part in 1957 as an Army officer in "California Gold Rush in Reverse" on the syndicated anthology series Death Valley Days. The episode is a dramatization of the race in 1848 between the Army and the Navy to be the first to deliver gold nuggets from California to Washington, D.C.

In 1958 and 1959 McClure appeared in three episodes of the syndicated western series 26 Men, stories of the Arizona Rangers. He appeared as Adam Davis in 1959 in the episode "The Court Martial of Trooper Davis" of another syndicated series, Mackenzie’s Raiders, starring Richard Carlson. He was in the third episode of The Twilight Zone, "Mr. Denton on Doomsday".

Then in 1962, he got the part of Trampas in NBC’s The Virginian. His co-stars throughout the series were James Drury, Roberta Shore, Lee J. Cobb, Randy Boone, Gary Clarke, Clu Gulager, Diane Roter, Charles Bickford, Sara Lane, Tim Matheson, Jeanette Nolan, and John McIntire.

After the show ended in 1971, McClure was slated to co-star with Bette Davis in a series about a parolee assisting a judge, played by Davis, in doing detective work. The pilot, produced and written by the prolific team of Richard Levinson and William Link, failed to generate interest in the series and was released as a telemovie under the title "The Judge and Jake Wyler". McClure starred in science fiction films such as At the Earth’s Core, The Land That Time Forgot and The People That Time Forgot, all three based on the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. In 1967, he played the Errol Flynn role in a re-make of Against All Flags titled The King’s Pirate. He was cast in the lead in two World War II adventures, The Longest Hundred Miles and The Birdmen. In the 1970s and 1980s, McClure appeared in commercials for Hamms Beer. Dick Kleiner syndicated column, Ocala Star-Banner, Oct 29, 1982.

In 1994, McClure was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Television at 7065 Hollywood Blvd. It was unveiled in what was his final public appearance.

Television

  • Riverboat – Corporal Jenkins in "The Face of Courage" (1959)
  • U.S. Marshal – Bruce Williams in "The Threat (1959)
  • Twilight Zone – Gunslinger (episode "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" (1959)
  • COronado 9 – Jimmy Hoke in "The Widow of Kill Cove" (1960)
  • Hennesey – Seaman Davies in "Angel Face" (1960)
  • Johnny Midnight – Rice in "Mother’s Boy" (1960)
  • Overland Trail – Frank Flippin (1960)
  • Checkmate – Jed Sills (1960–62)
  • The Virginian – Trampas (1962–71)
  • The Longest Hundred Miles (1967)
  • Escape of the Birdmen (1971)
  • Barbary Coast – Cash Conover (1975)
  • Satan’s Triangle – Lt. J. Haig (1975)
  • Search – C. R. Grover (1972–73)
  • Roots – Jimmy Brent (1977)
  • Out of This World – Mayor Kyle Applegate (1987–91)
  • In the Heat of the Night: "Time’s Long Shadow" (1994)
  • The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1994)