Buck Taylor

Walter Clarence "Buck" Taylor, III (born May 13, 1938) is an American actor and water color artist best known for his role as gunsmith-turned-deputy Newly O'Brien in 113 episodes during the last eight seasons of CBS's Gunsmoke television series (1967-1975). In recent years, he has painted the portrait of his friend and Gunsmoke costar James Arness.^[1] Taylor's painting specialty is the American West, and each year, he creates the posters for several Texas rodeos. Taylor lives with his second wife on a ranch near Fort Worth, Texas.^[2]

Early years, education, military

Taylor was born in Hollywood to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Taylor, Jr. He has an older sister, Faydean Taylor Tharp (born ca. 1931) of the Greater Los Angeles Area. His father was the character actor Dub Taylor, sometimes known as "Cannonball" Taylor and a native of Richmond, Virginia. Buck Taylor was born in the same year that his father got his first acting role in the film You Can't Take It With You. Dub Taylor starred with many leading actors, including John Wayne and the musicians Tex Ritter and Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Buck grew up on the various Hollywood sets. He was close to his father's Texas friend, the Western actor Chill Wills.^[3]

Taylor graduated from high school North Hollywood High School and studied theatre arts at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In 1960, he tried out for the Olympic Games in gymnastics. He served two years in the United States Navy.^[2]

Television and film roles

Taylor began appearing on television in 1963, with an appearance on ABC's The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and CBS's My Favorite Martian starring Ray Walston and Bill Bixby. He appeared twice on the 1963-1964 series The Greatest Show on Earth, a Desilu Production starring Jack Palance, which aired on ABC. Taylor costarred that year in the film Johnny Shiloh, the first of the more than fifty films in which he would eventually appear. He was then cast in Ensign Pulver (1964) and in The Wild Angels (1966), as a motorcycle gang member. He guest starred in Richard Boone's CBS western Have Gun - Will Travel, on Nick Adams' ABC series, The Rebel on Christopher Jones's ABC western The Legend of Jesse James, and on James Drury's NBC series, The Virginian.^[4]In the 2003 movie Gods and Generals, Taylor portrayed Maxcy Gregg.

Newly O'Brian on Gunsmoke

Taylor's long-term role on Gunsmoke was not his first role in a series. In the preceding 1966-1967 season, he starred in ten episodes as John "Brad" Bradford, along with Michael Anderson, Jr., and Barbara Hershey, in ABC's The Monroes, the story of an orphaned family trying to survive in the Wyoming wilderness.^[5]

Gunsmoke introduced Taylor on a weekly basis to millions of viewers. Dub Taylor also guest starred numerous times on the series. Before Taylor was cast as handsome young gunsmith "Newly", he had actually appeared in an earlier segment of the series as an outlaw. As Newly, however, he was clearly one of the "good guys" in the same tradition as James Arness as Matt Dillon. The Newly character superseded that of Clayton Thaddeus "Thad" Greenwood, played by Roger Ewing (born 1942). Taylor got along so well with the Gunsmoke cast that he named his second and third sons, Matthew Taylor and Cooper Glenn Taylor for James Arness' Marshal Matt Dillon character and for Glenn Strange (1899-1973), the character actor who played the bartender, Sam, and remained on the program until cancer claimed his life. Strange never knew of the honor, for Cooper Taylor was not born until 1975. Taylor was actively involved in the preparation of the script for the 1987 Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge reunion movie,^[6] by which time Milburn Stone, the cranky Doc Adams character, had died. Ken Curtis, the deputy Festus Haggen character, was still living. In 1991, Taylor co-starred with Curtis in what turned out to have been Curtis' last acting role in the film version of Louis L'Amour's Conagher, which also starred Taylor's friend, Sam Elliott and Elliott's wife, Katharine Ross.^[3]

Acting after Gunsmoke

After Gunsmoke, Taylor appeared in occasional Westerns, such as Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1980) and The Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983),^[7] on CBS's Dallas and Walker, Texas Ranger starring Chuck Norris.^[3]

Taylor had a memorable role too as Turkey Creek Jack Johnson in Tombstone (1993), played Colonel William Gamble in Gettysburg, and appeared in Rough Riders (1997), all co-starring with Sam Elliott. He appeared in director John Lee Hancock's The Alamo (2004) and in the Wyoming-based Flicka (2006), a loose adaptation of the novel My Friend Flicka.^[4]

He appeared as Ben Lily in January 2008, with his friend Val Kilmer in the CBS miniseries Comanche Moon, another in the Lonesome Dove line of television films. Taylor in 2008 is working for roles in three films set for production in 2009: The Hard Ride, The Last Horseman, and Legend of Hell's Gate.^[4]

Taylor the artist

In 1993, Taylor began selling his paintings at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. These paintings are sold through his website, private art shows and festivals, and at galleries. His private commissions can be found in the Loomis Fargo headquarters, the Franklin Mint, John Wayne Enterprises, the American Quarter Horse Association Museum in Amarillo, the National Ranching Heritage Center museum in Lubbock, and in the hands of private collectors Roy Clark, Val Kilmer, Roger Staubach, Powers Boothe (a native of Snyder, Texas), Sam Elliott, and James Arness. Taylor is the official artist for several rodeos, including the Pendleton Round-Up in Pendleton, Oregon, and state fairs.^[3]

Taylor's art touches on all aspects of the American West: cowboys, Native Americans, horses, homesteaders, and the landscape. He has painted drovers pushing longhorn cattle along western trails, braves pursuing the buffalo, or spectacular horse races. Taylor once said that the West Texas ranch is his "church", and his art is his "worship" of the Creator. Taylor's defense of the land is reflected in the film Truce, in which he, as the modern rancher Harry Dodds, uses grace and charm to outwit those who would take his land.^[3]

Awards

Taylor is an inductee of the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in Fort Worth and received the "Spirit of Texas" Award. In 1993, he received the Golden Boot award which honors the "Best of the West" from the Motion Picture and Television Fund. In 1998, Taylor, Rex Allen, and Christina Paine won the "Cowboy Spirit Award". In 2000, Taylor was memorialized in "The Trail of Fame" on the streets of Dodge City, the western Kansas town where Gunsmoke is set. He has also received the "Spirit of the West" award, along with Jack Palance and Roy Rogers. Additionally, Taylor is recognized on the Hollywood Walk of Fame with his friends Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross. Taylor's star also appears on the streets of "Little Hollywood" in Kanab, Utah. There his star is between Ronald W. Reagan and Tom Mix. In 1981, Taylor was inducted as a trustee in the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City for his Gunsmoke role.^[3]In 2006, he was awarded by the same organization with the "Wrangler" (or Western Heritage Award).^[3]Taylor has a plaque on the Walk of Western Stars in Santa Clarita, California, that includes past recipients James Arness and other Gunsmoke alumni, Dennis Weaver and the late Amanda Blake.^[4]

Family and charities

In 1961, Taylor married the actress Judy Ann Nugent, who was a sister-in-law of actor Nick Adams.^[8] The couple divorced in 1983. They had three sons: Adam Carlyle Taylor (1966-1994), Matthew Taylor (born 1970), and Cooper Glenn Taylor (born 1975). Adam was an assistant director, and Matthew and Cooper are Hollywood stunt men who were reared in Montana. Taylor is the father-in-law of actress/producer Anne Lockhart (born 1953), the widow of Adam Taylor, who died three days before his 28th birthday in a highway accident in Madison County, Montana. Anne is the daughter of actress June Lockhart. Taylor has two grandsons, Carlyle and Zane Taylor, the sons of Adam and Anne.^[9] Taylor and current wife Goldie, a flight attendant, met in 1995 at a quarter horse show, where his paintings were being exhibited. They wed after a three-month courtship.

Taylor supports the John Wayne Cancer Foundation, the Walt Garrison Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, the Future Farmers of America Scholarship, the Screen Actors Guild Retirement Home, the Ben Johnson Children's Hospital, and Frontier Texas!, a state-of-the-art museum for which Taylor does some of the narration. The museum opened in 2004 in Abilene, the seat of Taylor County (coincidence of the name) in West Texas,

References

External links

• Buck Taylor at the Internet Movie Database