Bill Elliott

Known for ActingBorn 1904-10-16Died 1965-11-26Pattonsburg, Missouri, USA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wild Bill Elliott (October 16, 1904 – November 26, 1965) was an American film actor. He specialized in playing the rugged heroes of B Westerns, particularly the Red Ryder series of films. By 1925, he was getting occasional extra work in films. He took classes at the Pasadena Playhouse and appeared in a few stage roles there. By 1927, he had made his first Western, The Arizona Wildcat, playing his first featured role. Several co-starring roles followed, and he renamed himself Gordon Elliott. But as the studios made the transition to sound films, he slipped back into roles as an extra and bit parts, as in Broadway Scandals, in 1929. For the next eight years, he appeared in over a hundred films for various studios, but almost always in unbilled parts as an extra. Elliott began to be noticed in some minor B Westerns, enough so that Columbia Pictures offered him the title role in a serial, The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1938). The serial was so successful, and Elliott so personable, that Columbia promoted him to starring in his own series of Western features, replacing Columbia's number-two cowboy star Robert "Tex" Allen. Henceforth Gordon Elliott would be known as Bill Elliott. Within two years, he was among the Motion Picture Herald's Top Ten Western Stars, where he would remain for the next 15 years. In 1943, Elliott signed with Republic Pictures, which cast him in a series of Westerns alongside George "Gabby" Hayes. The first of these, Calling Wild Bill Elliott, gave Elliott the name by which he would be best known and by which he would be billed almost exclusively for the rest of his career. Following several films in which both actor and character shared the name Wild Bill Elliott, he took the role for which he would be best remembered, that of Red Ryder in a series of sixteen movies about the famous comic strip cowboy and his young Indian companion, Little Beaver (played in Elliott's films by Bobby Blake). Elliott played the role for only two years but would forever be associated with it. Elliott's trademark was a pair of six guns worn butt-forward in their holsters. Elliott's career thrived during and after the Red Ryder films, and he continued making B Westerns into the early 1950s. He also had his own radio show during the late 1940s. His final contract as a Western star was with Monogram Pictures, where budgets declined as the B Western lost its audience to television. When Monogram became Allied Artists Pictures Corporation in 1953, it phased out its Western productions, and Elliott finished out his contract playing a homicide detective in a series of five modern police dramas, his first non-Westerns since 1938. Elliott retired from films (except for a couple of TV Western pilots which were not picked up). He worked for a time as a spokesman for Viceroy cigarettes and hosted a local TV program in Las Vegas, Nevada, which featured many of his Western films.Read more

Movies & web series

The Son of Davy Crockett

The Wildcat of Tucson

Taming of the West

Romance in the Air

She Couldn't Say No

The Maverick

Bordertown Gun Fighters

Wagon Tracks West

Overland Mail Robbery

The Valley of Vanishing Men

North of the Rockies

King of Dodge City

Pioneers of the Frontier

Beyond the Sacramento

Frontiers of '49

The Law Comes to Texas

Lone Star Pioneers

The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok

In Early Arizona

Michael O'Halloran

Double Cross Roads

The Arizona Wildcat

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Napoleon, Jr.

The Homesteaders

Waco

Kansas Territory

Marshal of Laredo

Marshal of Reno

San Antonio Kid

Tucson Raiders

Hidden Valley Outlaws

Vigilantes of Dodge City

Prairie Gunsmoke

The Lone Star Vigilantes

North from the Lone Star

Roaring Frontiers

Prairie Schooners

Swing It Professor

Trailin' West

Let's Do Things

Part Time Wife

She Who Gets Slapped

Restless Youth

Beyond London Lights

It's Showtime

California Gold Rush

Wagon Wheels Westward