Ty Hardin Wasn't Tab Hunter Who Isn't Troy Donahue

Ty Hardin, Tab Hunter, and Troy Donahue were, if only briefly,
the embodiment of the new generation of toned, devilishly handsome,
fair-haired, blue-eyed male screen idol of the 1950s and '60s.

The August 3rd passing of actor Ty Hardin, age 87, probably went unnoticed by most, simply because his was a presence from show business decades past. From 1958 to 1962, Hardin starred as Bronco Layne, a former Confederate soldier in the Civil War who drifts through various towns in the Old West in "Bronco," a TV series that alternated with two other western programs, "Cheyenne" and "Sugarfoot."

Ty Hardin poses for the obligatory publicity photo
promoting his starring role in the TV series "Bronco."

Born Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr. in New York City, the future Ty Hardin was six months old when the family moved to Austin, Texas. His father took off when he was five, and he was raised in part by his grandmother, who gave him the nickname "Ty" because he was as energetic as a "Texas typhoon coming through the house." He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and attained the rank of first lieutenant. Afterward, he played football at Texas A&M under future Crimson Tide coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.

Dressed as a cowboy for a Hollywood masquerade party with six-guns rented from a motion picture costume supplier, Orison was "discovered" by a Paramount Pictures talent scout. In 1957, he was put under contract by Paramount and was credited as "Ty Hungerford" for minor roles in "The Space Children" and "I Married a Monster from Outer Space."

Ty Hungerford (left), as the "Cowboy Loafer," confronts
Kirk Douglas in 1959's "Last Train from Gun Hill."

John Wayne had seen Hungerford while visiting a movie set on the Paramount lot and was impressed with his performance. Hoping for the part of the cocky gunslinger "Colorado" in Wayne's 1959 western "Rio Bravo," the fledgling actor was introduced by Duke to the director, Howard Hawks. That particular role had already been promised to pop singer Ricky Nelson, but thanks to Wayne's influence, Hawks' studio, Warner Bros., successfully bargained for Hungerford's contract from Paramount and subsequently changed Ty's surname to "Hardin," as an homage to infamous Texas gunfighter John Wesley Hardin.

Just like they used to say in commercials for the Time-Life "Old West"
series of books, outlaw John Wesley Hardin (left), the namesake of
Ty Hardin (right) really "shot a man for snoring too loud," although
he claimed he only intended to rouse the snorer by drunkenly firing
several shots through the hotel wall.

Competing as a rival to movie theaters, the popularity of television exploded in the late 1940s and '50s. Western series became an audience favorite and the staple of small-screen entertainment. The peak year for the TV western was 1959, when nearly 30 such series were airing in prime time.

It's a cluster-buckboard of Warner Bros. TV westerners: Wayde
Preston ("Colt .45"), Ty Hardin ("Bronco"), Jack Kelly ("Maverick"),
John Russell ("Lawman"), James Garner ("Maverick"), Peter Brown
("Lawman"), and Will Hutchins ("Sugarfoot").

When star Clint Walker left the western series "Cheyenne" in 1958 over a contract dispute with Warner Bros., Ty Hardin was brought on as Bronco Layne, while the show retained the title "Cheyenne" (after Walker's character name Cheyenne Bodie). Walker returned the following year, and "Bronco" was launched as a spinoff series, alternating on a weekly basis with another Warner Bros. western series, "Sugarfoot," starring Will Hutchins. Being a correspondence-school lawyer from the East who finds himself appointed sheriff in the Oklahoma Territory, Will Hutchins' character of Tom Brewster is given the nickname "Sugarfoot," a sobriquet one notch below tenderfoot.

Ty Hardin poses for the obligatory beefcake publicity photo.

In 1960, the series "Bronco" and "Sugarfoot" began alternating with episodes of "Cheyenne." Occasionally, the three actors would appear on each other's program.

Will Hutchins ("Sugarfoot"), Ty Hardin ("Bronco") and
Clint Walker ("Cheyenne") pal around for the photographer.

Nearly 50 years later, Ty Hardin, Clint Walker, and Will Hutchins
were reunited at a TV western convention in Mississippi in 2010.

After "Bronco" ran its course in 1962, Ty Hardin continued to be gainfully employed by Warner Bros., with prominent roles in the big-screen soap operas "The Chapman Report," with Jane Fonda, Claire Bloom, and Shelley Winters, and "Wall of Noise," featuring Suzanne Pleshette (pictured below) and Dorothy Provine.

The studio also cast Hardin in a pair of low-budget but slick-looking World War II action pictures, 1962's "Merrill's Marauders" and 1963's "PT 109."

Unlikely Hollywood leading man Jeff Chandler's last screen role was
as the real-life General Frank Merrill (pictured here with Ty Hardin
in "Merrill's Marauders") before his untimely death at age 42.

Not surprisingly, the supporting cast of "Merrill's Marauders," tautly directed by Samuel Fuller, featured a number of actors from the Warner Bros. TV backlot, including Peter Brown ("Lawman") and Will Hutchins ("Sugarfoot").

Likewise, the otherwise earnest "PT 109," based on a perilous exploit of then Lieutenant John F. Kennedy (portrayed by Cliff Robertson, who was JFK's personal choice for the role) in the Solomon Islands, had the flavor of a television production, particularly in the supporting performances by Robert Culp, James Gregory, Robert Blake, and Norman Fell.

Ty Hardin, cast as real-life Ensign Leonard Thom, was somehow inspired to depict the PT officer with platinum blond hair, a handlebar mustache, and matching goatee.

Ensign Leonard J. Thom (top) gets the Hollywood makeover
as characterized by Ty Hardin in "PT 109."

Ty Hardin's last film for Warner Bros. was 1963's "Palm Springs Weekend," the studio's response to the popular beach party movies cranked out by American International Pictures. Set during an Easter spring break weekend, the comedy concerns the romantic exploits of college students from Los Angeles who descend upon the desert resort. Directed by Norman Taurog, who made six Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedies and nine Elvis Presley musicals, the film starred Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, Stefanie Powers, and Robert Conrad. Earl Hamner Jr., the creator of "The Waltons," wrote the screenplay.

Ty Hardin more or less played the fifth wheel as a folksy, geetar-totin' Hollywood stuntman from Texas named "Stretch" Fortune who competes with spoiled rich playboy Robert Conrad for the attention of high schooler-posing-as-a-college-student Connie Stevens. Along with costar Jerry Van Dyke on banjo, Hardin strums and sings "Bye Bye Blackbird."

Actually, Troy Donahue had worked with Ty Hardin before "Palm Springs Weekend," on two separate episodes of Hardin's "Bronco" series.

Donahue was born Merle Johnson Jr. to a retired stage actress and the manager of the motion picture department of General Motors. He attended the New York Military Academy in Cornwall, 60 miles north of New York City, where he met Francis Ford Coppola, who was there on a music scholarship. Several years later, Coppola would cast Troy Donahue in "The Godfather Part II" as a suitor of Connie Corleone named Merles Johnson.

Merle Johnson (Troy Donahue) looks on as his fiancée Connie
(Talia Shire) consults with mama Corleone (Morgana King)
in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather Part II" (1974).

An injured knee at a track meet prevented young Merle from continuing on at West Point. At 18, he landed a job in New York as a messenger for a film company founded by his father, who had died when Merle was 14. After losing his position because he was too young to join the union, he attended Columbia University, studied journalism, acted in summer stock theater, and decided to move to Hollywood.

"Acting is all I ever wanted," Donahue said in a 1959 interview. "Ever since I can remember, I've studied and read plays - but my parents didn't want me to become an actor. They preferred something more stable - doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, anything."

Merle was "discovered" in a Malibu diner and arranged for what turned out to be an unsuccessful screen test for Columbia Pictures. According to show business lore, he received his movie name "Troy Donahue" from the same individual who dubbed Roy Scherer Jr. "Rock Hudson," Hollywood press agent Henry Willson, who signed to represent the fledgling actor. Donahue later joked that the name "Paris" was initially considered, after "the lover of Helen of Troy...But I guess they couldn't call me Paris Donahue because there was already a Paris, France...It took me five minutes to get used to my new name."

Donahue had signed with Universal Pictures but got his big break when Warner Bros. borrowed him to star opposite Sandra Dee in 1959's "A Summer Place," a soapy romantic drama about teenage lovers reunited 20 years later (portrayed by Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire) who are confronted with the passionate relationship between their children from previous marriages.

"A Summer Place" became equally popular for its
string-laden theme music, composed by Max Steiner,
which Percy Faith and his orchestra recorded as a
#1 hit for nine weeks on Billboard's Hot 100 chart.

Warner Bros. signed Donahue to a long-term contract and subsequently slotted him into a number of their western series, including "Maverick," "Colt .45," "Lawman," "Bronco," and "Sugarfoot."

In 1960, the trade publication The Film Daily named Troy Donahue one of the five "finds" of the year, coinciding with his starring role in Warner Bros. TV's "Surfside 6," an ABC series about a detective agency based on a Miami Beach houseboat. Van Williams, TV's future "The Green Hornet," Canadian actor Lee Patterson, and Diane McBain (Diana St. Clair in Elvis' "Spinout") fleshed out the cast of "Surfside 6," with Spanish-born entertainer Margarita Sierra as nightclub singer Cha Cha O'Brien.

Troy Donahue (left) poses with a cigarette on the set of "Surfside 6,"
in the company of Lee Patterson, Van Williams, and Diane McBain.

Troy's breakthrough screen role was portraying the title character in 1961's "Parrish," a turgid, thickly plotted drama about the conflict between a young unconventional man and his stepfather, a ruthless tobacco plantation owner played by Karl Malden. Warren Beatty and Anthony Perkins were considered for the part of the independently minded youth, but when original director Joshua Logan was replaced by Delmer Daves, the latter, who had worked with Troy Donahue on "A Summer Place," brought Troy on board.

Working with youngsters Troy Donahue, Connie Stevens, and Diane McBain (pictured above, with Donahue), veteran Karl Malden, all of 49 years old, said, "Working with these kids is a little tough sometimes. Still, they're eager and they're learning."

In 1963, Troy Donahue joined the cast of the ABC detective series "Hawaiian Eye" during its fourth and final season. Robert Conrad (future star of "The Wild Wild West") played a half-Hawaiian private investigator based at a Honolulu hotel, with Connie Stevens as perky photographer-lounge singer Cricket Blake. Donahue was cast as the hotel's social director who inevitably aided in the crime solving.

More foreheads than you can shake a stick at:
the cast of "Hawaiian Eye" includes Robert Conrad,
Connie Stevens, and Troy Donahue.

Of course, it was also in 1963 that Donahue, Stevens, and Conrad cavorted in California's Coachella Valley desert for the previously mentioned "Palm Springs Weekend," although it should be noted in that picture, Troy eschewed the affections of Connie Stevens for those of Stefanie Powers' Bunny Dixon (pictured below), the daughter of the resort town's flustered police chief.

"I guess because I was blond, blue-eyed and tanned, people associated me with all those beach movies...even though I never did one," Donahue once said. "I was always the goody-goody, the guy who did what he was supposed to."

In 1962, Donahue received from 5000 to 7500 fan letters a week. The following year, motion picture distributors voted him the 20th most popular star in the U.S. He also enjoyed a brief fling as a recording artist at the height of his fame, releasing a few singles on the Warner Bros. label, including "Live Young" and "Somebody Loves Me."

Troy Donahue was reunited with his "A Summer Place" director, Delmer Daves, for a fourth outing, 1962's "Rome Adventure," a glossy, shot-on-location romance between expatriate librarian Suzanne Pleshette and American graduate student Donahue. Suzanne, who had replaced Natalie Wood, fell in love with Troy during the production.

Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette were paired again in a dusty cavalry western from 1964 called "A Distant Trumpet" (pictured below), notably the last motion picture directed by Raoul Walsh, the venerated director of "High Sierra," with Humphrey Bogart as Mad Dog Roy Earle, "They Died with Their Boots On," featuring Errol Flynn as George Armstrong Custer, and "White Heat," starring James Cagney as Cody Jarrett.

Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette were married in early January 1964. Troy Donahue and Suzanne Pleshette were divorced nine months later.

This is how Suzanne Pleshette looked when she made her first
public appearance after the divorce, attending the premiere of
"Mary Poppins" with actor Roddy McDowall.

In 1965, Warner Bros. cast Troy Donahue against type as a psychotic killer in "My Blood Runs Cold" (pictured below), costarring Joey Heatherton, produced and directed by actor William Conrad (best known as the hefty star of the series "Cannon" and "Jake and the Fat Man").

Donahue asked for an early release from his contract with Warner Bros. in January 1966, after which he became convinced that Jack L. Warner had him blackballed from other studios. "By the time I could get work again it was too late because my type was already out of fashion." He told one interviewer, "My image came out of Warner Bros. and it was one on its way out."

Having stated that he started drinking when he was in seventh grade, Troy descended into alcoholism after leaving Warner Bros., admitting, as well, to addictions to pain killers, amphetamines, marijuana, and cocaine. "I spent a lot of time judging beauty contests and opening banks," he recalled.

"If you're the boy next door and you're supposed to be squeaky clean, all you had to do was let your sideburns grow and suddenly you were a hippie," he recalled, citing casting directors who would ask him, "Why don't you comb your hair? How come you grew a mustache? What are you doing with a beard?"

Virtually homeless after relocating to New York City, he claimed to have lived "in a bush in Central Park one summer," keeping his belongings in a backpack. In 1971, requiring little makeup accoutrements, Donahue portrayed a Charles Manson-like cult leader in a low-budget potboiler titled "Sweet Savior" (pictured below).

While promoting the picture, Donahue said, "I play Moon, a religious creep who murders a lot of people, a really heavy trip. But I don't want anyone to think I'm playing it in some phony exploitation flick that takes advantage of the Manson case to make a fast buck. I don't like many things, man...but I dig this picture...Sure, I met Manson at the beach playing volleyball."

Thirty-eight years later, "A Summer Place" costars
Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee reunite in 1997.

Donahue eventually moved back to Los Angeles and endured a fourth, failed marriage before joining Alcoholic Anonymous in 1981. In his final years, the actor became engaged to operatic mezzo-soprano Zheng Cao. On September 2, 2001, he died from complications of a heart attack, age 65.

In probably one of his last public appearances, Troy Donahue
attends a luncheon honoring actress Beverly Garland, accompanied
by Chinese-born Zheng Cao, in January of 2001.

One of Troy Donahue's final legitimate screen roles was playing opposite cult actress Mink Stole in writer-director John Waters' kitschy 1990 musical comedy "Cry-Baby," starring Johnny Depp as a Baltimore juvenile delinquent. Mink Stole, born in Baltimore, has appeared in all of fellow Baltimore native John Waters' feature films.

Portraying troubled parents in John Waters' "Cry-Baby" are Andy
Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro and Joey Heatherton, Troy
Donahue and Mink Stole, and David Nelson and Patricia Hearst.

Coincidentally, filmmaker John Waters also provided Tab Hunter, the third in our triumvirate of Hollywood golden boys, with a latter-day role in 1981's "Polyester" (pictured below), a twisted satire of suburbia featuring Divine, the industrial-sized comedic drag queen.

The cast of "Polyster" also included John Waters' regulars Edith
Massey and Mink Stole, along with punk rocker Stiv Bators.

Tab Hunter, born Arthur Kelm, starred in over 40 films and, like Troy Donahue and Ty Hardin, was best known as a Hollywood star of the 1950s and '60s. As a teenager, he competed in both singles and pairs ice skating. At 15, he lied about his age to join the Coast Guard, where he earned the nickname "Hollywood" for his preference for watching movies rather than going to bars when on liberty.

After the Coast Guard, he met Richard Clayton, James Dean's agent, who suggested Kelm pursue a career in acting. Clayton introduced the young man to Henry Willson, the same talent agent who had signed Troy Donahue. (Willson, incidentally, also represented Ty Hardin.) Like Rock Hudson and Troy Donahue, the fledgling actor was renamed "Tab Hunter" by Willson.

Offered a contract by Warner Bros., one of Hunter's first films for the studio was 1955's "The Sea Chase," starring John Wayne and Lana Turner.

Cadet Tab Hunter receives a dressing-down by captain
John Wayne in "The Sea Chase."

The year 1955 also saw Hunter's breakthrough role as Private Danny Forrester, a young Marine in the World War II drama "Battle Cry," written by Exodus author (and former Marine) Leon Uris and directed by Raoul Walsh. The movie, starring Van Heflin, Aldo Ray, and James Whitmore, became Warner's highest grossing picture of the year and established Hunter as one of Hollywood's top young romantic leads.

Tab's character has a fling with an older woman, the manager of
the local USO (played by Dorothy Malone), in "Battle Cry."

Despite a 1955 press release revealing Tab Hunter's 1950 arrest for disorderly conduct at a gay party, he was named Most Promising New Personality in a nationwide poll by the Council of Motion Picture Organizations. In 1956, he allegedly received 62,000 Valentines. Warner Bros. promoted him to star status and attempted to make him and Natalie Wood into a bankable screen couple, pairing them in a western, "The Burning Hills," and in the service comedy "The Girl He Left Behind."

Tab Hunter and Natalie Wood pose for a pair of very curious
publicity photographs.

Reports of Hunter's romances with Natalie Wood and Debbie Reynolds were strictly the result of studio publicity machinery. As Hunter and Wood supposedly embarked on a well-publicized but fictitious romance, insiders came up with their own headline: "Natalie Wood but Tab Wouldn't."

Hunter later admitted that life "was difficult for me, because I was living two lives at the time. A private life of my own, which I never discussed, never talked about to anyone. And then my Hollywood life, which was just trying to learn my craft and succeed." The word gay "wasn't even around in those days, and if anyone ever confronted me with it, I'd just kinda freak out. I was in total denial...Moviegoers wanted to hold in their hearts...the boy-next-door Marines, cowboys, and swoon-bait sweethearts I portrayed."

Hunter had lengthy relationships with actor Anthony Perkins (pictured above) and champion figure skater and Olympic medalist Ronnie Robertson (pictured below), before settling down with his partner of over 30 years, film producer Allan Glaser.

Regardless of rumors and hearsay, Tab Hunter was Warner Bros.' most popular male star from 1955 to 1959. He had a No. 1 hit record in 1957 with the song "Young Love." He also recorded the hit song "Ninety-Nine Ways" for a record company owned by Paramount Pictures, which prompted Jack Warner to enforce the actor's contract with his studio by creating Warner Bros. Records specifically for Hunter.

Hunter's film career was at its zenith in 1958. He starred in "Lafayette Escadrille," the final film in the career of venerable director William A. Wellman (who made 1927's "Wings," the first movie to win the Academy Award for Best Picture), based on his personal exploits as one of several young American aces who flew for France in World War I. The youthful cast of combat pilots included David Janssen, Will Hutchins, Clint Eastwood, Tom Laughlin (best known as the star of "Billy Jack"), and William Wellman Jr. as his pop.

Tab Hunter stands alongside a brooding Clint Eastwood
in "Lafayette Escadrille."

Jack Warner allowed Columbia Pictures to borrow Hunter for the role of James Darren's no-goodnik brother in the 1958 western "Gunman's Walk," which Tab always considered his favorite part. Hunter returned to Warner Bros. later that year to portray ballplayer Joe Hardy in the film version of the smash Broadway musical "Damn Yankees."

"Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets," Gwen Verdon - as the Devil's
"best home-wrecker" - tempts Washington Senators slugger
Joe Hardy (Tab Hunter) in "Damn Yankees."

Tab Hunter's failure to win the role of Tony Wyzek in the screen adaptation of "West Side Story" prompted him to choose to star in a weekly sitcom in 1961, "The Tab Hunter Show," created by Stanley Shapiro, who co-scripted three of Doris Day's most successful comedies, including "Pillow Talk," for which he shared an Oscar. Competing against "The Ed Sullivan Show," Hunter's series was canceled after one season.

Tab Hunter tries to make it look as if everything is copacetic on
the troubled set of "The Tab Hunter Show," with guest star,
comedic actress Nita Talbot (remember her as the Russian spy
Marya on "Hogan's Heroes"?).

In the 1960s, Tab Hunter moved to the south of France and appeared in spaghetti westerns and macaroni combat films, such as 1968's "Vengeance Is My Forgiveness" (pictured below) and "The Last Chance" and 1969's "Bridge Over the Elbe."

...From director Roberto Mauri, the filmmaker who gave us
"Ivanhoe, the Norman Swordsman" and "King of Kong Island."

Among Hunter's rare intermittent screen assignments, interspersed with guest appearances on a number of TV series was a role as doomed outlaw Sam Dodd in director John Huston's raucous 1972 western "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean," starring Paul Newman as the "Law West of the Pecos." Coincidentally, the film also featured Hunter's onetime partner Anthony Perkins, both of whom are pictured here.

Not unlike Troy Donahue's attempt to play against type as a disturbed killer in 1965's "My Blood Runs Cold," Tab Hunter portrayed a homicidal necrophiliac with a mother complex in 1973's "Sweet Kill" (pictured below), a Roger Corman production of the first film written and directed by Curtis Hanson, the future Oscar-winning writer-director of 1997's "L.A. Confidential."

Hunter's stateside career was revived when he appeared opposite Divine in both the above-mentioned "Polyester" and the 1985 western satire "Lust in the Dust," the latter directed by Paul Bartel (the deviant mind behind the corpse-for-dog food comedy "Eating Raoul"). Inspired in part by the overblown 1946 western saga "Duel in the Sun," starring Gregory Peck and Jennifer Jones, which was itself nicknamed by insiders "Lust in the Dust," the comedy (pictured below), featured Lainie Kazan, Geoffrey Lewis, Henry Silva, Cesar Romero, and Woody Strode.

Sporting a serape worthy of Clint Eastwood's Man
With No Name, Tab Hunter poses with Lainie Kazan
and Divne on the set of "Lust in the Dust."

Tab Hunter also had a memorable role as substitute teacher Mr. Stuart, who sings "Reproduction" in 1982's "Grease 2" (pictured below).

Hunter continued to have fun with his image throughout the 1980s. In 1982's "Pandemonium," a spoof of slasher movies set at a cheerleading academy terrorized by a murderous stalker, featuring Carol Kane as one of the menaced students and Tom Smothers as a Canadian Mountie, Tab hammed it up in a cameo as Blue Grange, a former All-American fullback who harbored a secret wish to be a cheerleader.

In a flashback scene from "Pandemonium," the cheerleaders'
half-time salute to vegetables is marred when the lineup is
shish-kabobbed by a single javelin.

"Grotesque" (1988) was a straight-on horror outing starring Linda Blair (who associate produced) and Donna Wilkes (best known as the star of 1984 "Angel" - "High school honor student by day / Hollywood hooker by night"). Tab Hunter plays the father of a horribly disfigured brute who, in a surprise twist, reveals himself to be equally disfigured when he pulls off his amazingly realistic, handsome Tab Hunter mask (pictured below).

 

Tab Hunter's last screen role before retiring from acting was a supporting role in "Dark Horse," a 1992 coming-of-age family drama about a troubled teenage girl (Ari Meyers) sentenced to community service at a horse ranch. Costarring Ed Begley Jr. and Mimi Rogers, the film was based on an original story by Hunter.

In 1989, Hunter, a longtime horse enthusiast, and his
partner, Allan Glaser, produced a star-studded documentary
titled "Hollywood on Horses," featuring such fellow equine
lovers as Linda Blair, Bo Derek, Danny Glover, Ben Johnson,
William Shatner, Patrick Swayze, and Robert Wagner.

In 2005, the actor published a tell-all autobiography titled Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star. The best seller inspired the 2015 documentary "Tab Hunter Confidential," co-produced by Allan Glaser.

An 80-something Tab Hunter poses with partner Allan Glaser
outside a theater screening "Tab Hunter Confidential."

Like Tab Hunter, Ty Hardin, when his Warner Bros. contract dried up, sought acting opportunities overseas. He allegedly said no to an offer from director Sergio Leone to star in 1964's "A Fistful of Dollars," the Italian western that brought international stardom to Clint Eastwood. Reportedly, Ty was also the first choice to star in the TV series "Batman" but turned it down because of film commitments in Europe.

Shot in Spain, 1965's "Battle of the Bulge" was an international co-production that depicted an enormously inaccurate account of the pivotal World War II conflict, with arid Spanish plains substituting for the wintry forests of Ardennes. In a cast of veteran and future stars including Henry Fonda, Robert Shaw, Robert Ryan, Dana Andrews, Charles Bronson, and Telly Savalas, Hardin portrayed a nasty Nazi masquerading as an American GI (pictured below).

Historically, Operation Greif was the name given to an actual attempt commanded by the SS, as a brainchild of Hitler himself, to capture strategic bridges over the Meuse River before the Allies could destroy them, utilizing German soldiers in captured American and British uniforms who could speak flawless English as a ruse to confuse the rear guard of Allied troops at the Battle of the Bulge.

"Custer of the West" (1967), another historical account rife with inaccuracies, not the least of which were vast Spanish landscapes standing in for Wyoming and Montana vistas and the presence of Irish
character actor Kieron Moore as Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife, presented Robert Shaw in the title role, with his real-life Scottish wife, the luminous blonde Mary Ure, as Custer's otherwise chestnut brown-haired wife Libbie.

Ty Hardin (left) and Jeffrey Hunter portray Major Reno and
Captain Benteen to Robert Shaw's George Armstrong Custer.

In the 1967 British horror thriller "Berserk!" 37-year-old Ty Hardin was curiously cast as a daredevil high-wire artist who becomes the unlikely paramour of sexagenarian Joan Crawford as the creepy carnival owner-in-a-leotard.

Ty Hardin appears lost on the British set of "Berserk!" with Judy
Geeson, a staple of English thrillers, and Diana Dors, buxom
ex-wife of British actor and future game show host Richard Dawson.

In 1969, Ty Hardin starred as a charter boat captain who happens to be a private investigator in the Australian-produced TV series "Riptide" (pictured below).

In the early 1970s, Ty Hardin finally ambled into roles in spaghetti westerns, films with titles like "Terrible Day of the Big Gundown," "Day of Judgment," "Holy Water Joe," and "You're Jinxed, Friend, You've Met Sacramento." He later said he could barely remember the movies because he was the only one speaking English.

Ty Hardin plays a Union soldier seeking vengeance against the six
men who killed his family in "Day of  Judgment."

After modest attempts to introduce New York Jets Super Bowl champion quarterback "Broadway Joe" Namath to screen audiences in 1970's "C.C. and Company," with Ann-Margret, and "Norwood," with Glen Campbell, producers lured him to Italy in 1971 to portray an AWOL Confederate soldier with a '70's puppy-dog haircut in a sloppy, lackadaisical horse opera called "The Last Rebel," costarring American western veterans Jack Elam and Woody Strode (pictured below).

Ty Hardin sports his 1970s shag cut and beard as
the laid-back, duplicitous sheriff in "The Last Rebel."

In 1973, Ty Hardin found himself wearing a powdered wig in the Hungarian-French-German co-produced TV series "Arpad, the Gypsy" (pictured below), set during the Austrian-Hungarian empire.

One of Ty Hardin's last film roles was in the low-budget 1990 western "Bad Jim," produced as a starring vehicle for John Clark Gable, screen legend Clark Gable's sole son, who was born to actress Kay Williams four months after his father's death.

The part of a young cowpoke who buys Billy the Kid's horse in
"Bad Jim" did little to enhance John Clark Gable's legacy as the
offspring of "The King of Hollywood."

Along with Ty Hardin (pictured below), "Bad Jim" at least boasted the participation of James Brolin, Richard Roundtree, Harry Carey Jr., and Rory Calhoun.

Ty Hardin was married eight times. His third wife, Marlene Schmidt, was a former Miss Germany and Miss Universe who starred in a string of exploitation pictures in the 1970s and '80s (movies with titles like "The Teacher," "Dr. Minx," and "They're Playing with Fire"), all directed by Iraqi-born American filmmaker Howard (Hikmet) Avedis. At the time of his death, Ty was living in Huntington Beach with his wife of ten years, Caroline (pictured below).

Postscript

With the passing of Ty Hardin, that once teeming corral of actors from the golden age of TV westerns has been reduced to three old cowhands, namely 87-year-old Will Hutchins ("Sugarfoot"), 90-year-old Clint Walker ("Cheyenne"), and 87-year-old Clint Eastwood ("Rawhide")*.

* Regrettably, one TV westerner we neglected to mention is Robert Fuller, who starred in "Laramie" from 1959 to 1963 and costarred in "Wagon Train" from 1963 to 1965. This past July, Fuller celebrated his 84th birthday.