Robert Louis Colbert was born in Long Beach, California, on July 26, 1931, the son of Helena (née Gorman) and Clarence Colbert.[1] He began acting when he was a soldier based on the Japanese island of Okinawa. He was a clerk typist with a Military Police unit and also worked as a disc jockey for radio station KSBK in the evenings. A woman in Air Force Special Services heard his voice and recruited him to act in a performance of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial.[2] He gained acting experience with the Portland (Oregon) Repertory Theater.[3]
In 1960, he appeared in three episodes of the ABC/WB western, Colt .45 with Wayde Preston, including the episode "Showdown at Goldtown". Colbert plays Johnny Moore, a young ex-convict. Colbert also appeared as Bill Mannix in another 1960 Colt .45 episode, "Strange Encounter."[4]
On October 28, 1960, Colbert was cast as Army Corporal Howie Burch in the episode "Two Trails to Santa Fe" of the ABC/WB western series Cheyenne starring Clint Walker.[5]
Colbert's first appearance in Maverick was in the fourth season, in "Hadley's Hunters," playing a character called "Cherokee" Dan Evans, an episode featuring many cameos by the lead actors in other Warner Bros.Western series playing their usual roles: Will Hutchins as Sugarfoot, Ty Hardin as Bronco, Clint Walker as Cheyenne, and John Russell and Peter Brown from Lawman. Colbert wore a black hat on the back of his head during the episode, the way James Garner's character had in earlier seasons (Garner and Colbert resembled each other extremely closely). Later that same season, in 1961, Colbert was forced by Warner Bros. to wear the whole costume, dressed exactly as look-alike Garner had in Garner's earlier role of Bret Maverick to play a new series regular called Brent Maverick. Thinking of the inevitable comparisons to Garner that were bound to ensue, Colbert said to his bosses, "Put me in a dress and call me Brenda, but don't do this to me!"[6] Garner had been a huge success in the role and was in the process of moving into a much-anticipated theatrical movie career in the wake of winning a contentious lawsuit with Warner Bros. Colbert played his part in two episodes and was not called back for the following season since the studio, facing a steep ratings decline after the departures of writer/producer Roy Huggins and star Garner, agreed to alternate new episodes featuring only Bret and Brent's brother Bart Maverick (Jack Kelly) with reruns from earlier seasons starring Garner during the series' fifth and final season. Colbert, whose only two episodes as Brent Maverick were "The Forbidden City" and "Benefit of Doubt," had never received enough screen time to see if he could have eventually succeeded in bolstering the ratings.
Before Roger Moore, who played Bart's cousin Beau Maverick, left Maverick during the same season in which Colbert appeared, the studio shot numerous publicity photographs of Colbert, Kelly and Moore cavorting in costume together that are readily accessible on Google Images; the rights to many of the pictures are currently owned by Getty Images. By the time Colbert's two episodes were telecast, however, Moore had already quit the show and Moore and Colbert never appeared together in the series itself. James Garner reminisced in his Archive of American Television interview that the studio lit Colbert darkly as well as dressing him like Garner in an attempt to mislead the public that Garner had returned but that when Colbert spoke, the audience realized that it wasn't Garner.[citation needed] A viewing of the episodes themselves, however, reveals that Garner was mistaken about this and that Colbert was lit normally during his shows although he was certainly dressed precisely as Garner had been earlier in the series.[citation needed]
In 1962, Colbert appeared as Miles Kroeger on the TV western The Virginian on the episode titled "Impasse." In 1962, Colbert played Lonzo Green in the episode "Footlights" of the ABC/WB crime drama, The Roaring 20s. Moreover, he guest starred on most of the ABC/WB series, including 77 Sunset Strip and Hawaiian Eye (seven times each), Bronco (six times), Bourbon Street Beat (three times), Sugarfoot, The Alaskans with Roger Moore, Twelve O’Clock High (TV Series), and Surfside 6 (twice each), and Cheyenne and Lawman, once each.
Due to a business issue resulting from a restaurant investment, Colbert requested that Warner Bros. Television head Bill Orr release him from his Warners contract.[7]
Throughout the early 1960s Colbert guest-starred in a variety of popular television series including a trip back to Warner Bros. to appear in a 1964 episode of 77 Sunset Strip. He was also cast as Andy Carter, a pioneer who retrieves for sale cast-off items from wagon trains in the 1964 episode "A Bargain Is for Keeping" of the syndicated televisionanthology seriesDeath Valley Days (hosted by future PresidentRonald Reagan).[8] Colbert made an unsuccessful 1964 television pilot for MGM Television playing the title role of the Mayor. In 1965, he made two guest appearances on Perry Mason as Deputy District Attorney Snell—first in "The Case of the Grinning Gorilla", then in "The Case of the Hasty Honeymooner".
That same year, Colbert guest-starred in an episode of Bonanza, "The Meredith Smith", in which he appeared dressed almost exactly as he had as Brent Maverick only in full color with a bright blue hatband. In the episode he portrays a man called Ace Jones, who claims to be Meredith Smith, the heir of a large estate.
Colbert's agent arranged a meeting with Irwin Allen. In 1966–1967, Colbert played the part of Doug Phillips in thirty episodes of the Irwin Allenscience fiction ABC series The Time Tunnel, the second lead in a show about two time travelers. James Darren and Lee Meriwether starred with Colbert. Historical events like the Alamo, the sinking of the Titanic, the volcanic eruption on Krakatoa, and Custer's Last Stand were fictionalized. Colbert later starred in an unsuccessful 1970 television pilot for Allen entitled City Beneath the Sea that was shown as a made-for-TV movie.
In 1968, Colbert appeared in the final episode of the first season of Hawaii Five-O. In 1969, he was a guest star in an episode of Mannix, "Who Is Sylvia" (season 3, episode 19), where he played an old friend of Mannix, Phil, whose wife is the victim of several murder attempts. He was also a guest star in another episode of Mannix, "Duet for Three" (season 4, episode 13), playing Vic Stanley, whose friend Mart commits suicide in Hong Kong. Also in 1969, Colbert appeared in an episode of That Girl, "Fly Me To The Moon" (season 3, episode 23), as Air Force Reserve Major Brian James. Colbert also appeared as the character Stuart Brooks on the television soap opera The Young and the Restless from March 1973 to March 1983, being honored at the show's tenth anniversary.
In 1971, Colbert guest-starred again on Mannix in the episode "A Choice of Evils" as spy John Phillips. He made another guest appearance on Mannix in 1972, in the episode "A Walk in the Shadows" as scheming businessman Carl Blake.[9][10] In 1973, he made a brief appearance in the Mannix episode, "Little Girl Lost" (season 7, episode 4), where he appeared as the victim of a murder. In 1987, he appeared in the film parody Amazon Women on the Moon.
Personal life
In 1961, Colbert married dancer/songwriter Dorothy Marian "Dotty" Harmony (1933–2023). They were married for 15 years, remarrying again many years later in 2022.[11] Harmony wrote for Metric Music with Sharon Sheeley and had songs recorded by Rick Nelson. They have two children, Cami and Clay. Cami is married to filmmaker Jon Freeman (Flesh Wound Films), who produces the highly successful "Crusty Demon" series of DVDs.
Colbert is retired, though he still makes occasional cameo appearances, takes part in science fiction conventions and Western conventions all across America, and participates in celebrity golf tournaments for fundraising events.
Maverick is an American Western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins and originally starring James Garner as an adroitly articulate poker player plying his trade on riverboats and in saloons while traveling incessantly through the 19th-century American frontier. The show ran for five seasons from September 22, 1957, to July 8, 1962 on ABC.
Bronco is a Western television series on ABC from 1958 through 1962. It was shown by the BBC in the United Kingdom. The program starred Ty Hardin as Bronco Layne, a former Confederate officer who wandered the Old West, meeting such well-known individuals as Wild Bill Hickok, Billy the Kid, Jesse James, Theodore Roosevelt, Belle Starr, Cole Younger, and John Wesley Hardin.
Joseph Peter Breck was an American character actor. The rugged, dark-haired Breck played the gambler and gunfighter Doc Holliday on the ABC/Warner Bros. Television series Maverick as well as Victoria Barkley's hot-tempered middle son Nick in the 1960s ABC/Four Star Western The Big Valley. Breck also had the starring role in an earlier NBC/Four Star Western television series entitled Black Saddle.
Sugarfoot is an American Western television series that aired for 69 episodes on ABC from 1957-1961 on Tuesday nights on a "shared" slot basis – rotating with Cheyenne ; Cheyenne and Bronco ; and Bronco. The Warner Bros. production stars Will Hutchins as Tom Brewster, an Easterner who comes to the Oklahoma Territory to become a lawyer. Brewster was a correspondence-school student whose apparent lack of cowboy skills earned him the nickname "Sugarfoot", a designation even below that of a tenderfoot.
John Augustus Kelly Jr. was an American film and television actor most noted for the role of Bart Maverick in the television series Maverick, which ran on ABC from 1957 to 1962.
Will Hutchins is an American actor most noted for playing the lead role of the young lawyer Tom Brewster, in the Western television series Sugarfoot, which aired on ABC from 1957 to 1961 for 69 episodes.
Andrew Duggan was an American character actor. His work includes 185 screen credits between 1949 and 1987 for roles in both film and television, as well a number more on stage.
Cheyenne is an American Western television series of 108 black-and-white episodes broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1962. The show was the first hour-long Western, and was the first hour-long dramatic series of any kind, with continuing characters, to last more than one season. It was also the first series to be made by a major Hollywood film studio which did not derive from its established film properties, and the first of a long chain of Warner Bros. original series produced by William T. Orr.
Ray Elgin Teal was an American actor. His most famous role was as Sheriff Roy Coffee on the television series Bonanza (1959–1972), which was only one of dozens of sheriffs on television and in movies that he played during his long and prolific career stretching from 1937 to 1970. He appeared in pictures such as Western Jamboree (1938) with Gene Autry, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) with Fredric March and Myrna Loy, The Black Arrow (1948), Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) with Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster.
Walter Stacy Keach Sr. was an American actor whose screen career spanned more than five decades.
The Alaskans is a 1959–1960 ABC/Warner Bros. Western television series set during the late 1890s in the port of Skagway, Alaska. The show features Roger Moore as "Silky Harris" and Jeff York as "Reno McKee", a pair of adventurers intent on swindling travelers bound for the Yukon Territories during the height of the Klondike Gold Rush. Their plans are inevitably complicated by the presence of singer "Rocky Shaw", "an entertainer with a taste for the finer things in life".
Colt .45 is an American Western television series, originally starring Wayde Preston, which aired on ABC between October 1957 and September 1960.
Pierre Lynn de Lappe, also known as Peter Brown, was an American actor. He portrayed Deputy Johnny McKay opposite John Russell as Marshal Dan Troop in the 1958 to 1962 ABC-Warner Brothers western television series Lawman and Texas Ranger Chad Cooper on NBC's Laredo from 1965 to 1967.
Taliaferro Ware "Tol" Avery was an American film and television character actor who appeared in more than 100 separate works between 1950 and 1974.
Charles Randolph "Chubby" Johnson was an American film and television supporting character actor with a genial demeanor and warm, country-accented voice.
Conflict is a 1956 to 1957 American ABC television series that was a successor to the earlier Warner Bros. Presents. Although Conflict assumed the same time slot as its predecessor, the two do not share the same format. Where Warner Bros. Presents had been a wheel series, Conflict was fully an anthological series. However, since Cheyenne and Conflict alternated the Tuesday 7:30 P.M. time slot, the net effect was that of a proper wheel series—even though Cheyenne and Conflict were not under the same umbrella title.
Anna Marie Nanasi, better known by her professional name Ahna Capri, was an American film and television actress best known for her role as Tania in the martial-arts film Enter the Dragon.
Randy Stuart, was an American actress in film and television. A familiar face in several popular films of the 1940s and 1950s, and later in Western-themed television series, she is perhaps best remembered as Louise Carey, the wife of Scott Carey, played by Grant Williams, in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).
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