Cast

Bill Elliott

Acting

Cast

Bill Elliott

Known for

Acting

Born

1904-10-16

From

Pattonsburg, Missouri, USA

Died

1965-11-26

Also known as Wild Bill Elliott, Gordon Nance, Gordon Eliott

Biography

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.

Bill Elliott

Bill Elliott

Biography

A Lost Lady

Party Husband

Wonder Bar

Scarface

Roaring Frontiers

Working Girls

Merrily We Go to Hell

The Mummy

Lady with a Past

Lord Byron of Broadway

Five and Ten

It's Showtime

Sweepstakes

Vanity Fair

The Roaring Twenties

In Old Sacramento

'G' Men

You Can't Have Everything

Old Los Angeles

Bullets or Ballots

The Savage Horde

Gold Diggers of 1933

Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ

Love Takes Flight

The Woman in Red

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Born Reckless

Boots and Saddles

China Clipper

Michael O'Halloran

The Merry Frinks

The Walking Dead

Platinum Blonde

Two Against the World

The Boy Friend

Night After Night

Wagon Tracks West

Only Yesterday

Midnight Mary

The Secret Bride

Born to Love

The Man from Thunder River

Jewel Robbery

Blonde Crazy

The Keyhole

Bright Lights

Handlebars

God's Gift to Women

Sun Valley Cyclone

Beyond the Sacramento

The Gallant Legion

The Rich Are Always with Us

The Maverick

Go Into Your Dance

The Murder of Dr. Harrigan

North from the Lone Star

Murder in the Clouds

Letter of Introduction

The Lone Star Vigilantes

The Last Bandit

The Payoff

One Hour with You

She Who Gets Slapped

The Marshall of Trail City

Taming of the West

Across the Sierras

The Public Defender

Dr. Socrates

Prairie Schooners

Lone Star Pioneers

North of the Rockies

Mojave Firebrand

West of Broadway

Marshal of Laredo

Great Stagecoach Robbery

The Fabulous Texan

The Plastic Age