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Cowboy in the Spotlight - Story

Perhaps one of the best admired actors of the western television era is the man in the spotlight. This not my story but certainly one worth reading and of interest to all who miss those days.

Dennis Weaver grew up on a Missouri farm, and was an outstanding athlete on his college track and field team. He competed in the decathlon and came close to making the US Olympic team in 1948. A struggling actor for many years, he eventually became a familiar character actor in films, mostly low-budget westerns, and played Marshal Dillon's friend and deputy Chester Goode for the first nine years of TV's Gunsmoke.

Weaver gave his Gunsmoke character a limp and a twangy accent, and said later that he added these endearing embellishments to prevent his performance from being overshadowed by the towering James Arness, who played Dillon. Being a TV sidekick was not a lucrative job in the 1950s, so between seasons Weaver augmented his income by touring in a singing trio with his castmates Milburn Stone and Amanda Blake.
After leaving Gunsmoke, Weaver starred as the friendly veterinarian Kentucky Jones, as the paternal Everglades ranger with a bear on his hands in Gentle Ben, and as the New Mexico deputy marshal on loan to the New York Police in McCloud. In films, Weaver played the nervous manager of the Mirador Motel in Orson Welles' classic Touch of Evil. He also played a police captain in Jack Webb's original theatrical film of Dragnet, then played five different characters in five episodes of the subsequent series.

During a 1971 break from McCloud, Weaver was offered the lead in a television movie, playing a lonely traveling salesman chased and taunted on the highway by a crazed trucker. As the star, he was given veto power over the network's selection of a rookie director, but he agreed that the energetic young Steven Spielberg deserved a chance. The film, Duel, was released theatrically overseas, launched Spielberg's career, and is still considered one of the best films ever made for commercial television.

Weaver was a vegetarian since 1958, when, he says, it was still difficult to find a meat-free entrée at a restaurant, even in Hollywood. Solidly liberal, he and Valerie Harper were co-founders of L.I.F.E. (Love is Feeding Everyone), a charity which now helps fund more than 100,000 meals weekly to the homeless and hungry in Los Angeles. A devoted environmentalist, Weaver spoke out against America's addiction to fossil fuels, and lived in a solar-powered home constructed from about 3,000 recycled auto tires and 300,000 tin and aluminum cans. He advocated "creating prosperity without pollution", and recycled almost everything he used. He founded The Institute of Ecolonomics (a word Weaver coined, combining "ecology" and "economics").
Weaver died in his home of complications from cancer in 2006, at the age of 81.

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Cowboy in the Spotlight

Cowboy in the Spotlight - Story