The Radio Times, 1959. Article and picture contributed by Christine.
BBC Westerns
We�ve heard a great deal over the past few months about television Westerns-about the good or evil that they do, about their influence on the young, the old, and the nervous.
We�ve seen them criticised, defended, dismissed, applauded, and even watched them subjected to the penetrating mind of a psychiatrist. But, without wanted to take any kind of official attitude about them, we can safely say, from the volume of letters we have received over the years, that they are in the main enjoyed.
Certainly, if viewing figures can be thrown into the argument, they are watched by millions every week.
Outstanding among these stories of the bad old days out West is the current Saturday-night presentation of Laramie which seems to have found almost the perfect formula for building each week upon its four central characters. Nor would it be invidious to pick out of this quartet the man who has already become, in a matter of weeks, a tremendously popular star on both sides of the Atlantic. He is Robert Fuller, who plays the dark, brooding, restless Jess Harper, the man who is always on the point of tearing up his roots from the Sherman ranch and moving on. In response to hundreds of requests, we are happy to give the following facts about him.
Born in Troy, NY., in 1933, he began his adult life as an usher in a Hollywood theatre and rose quickly to the post of assistant manager. Then came his first break-as a dancer in a musical-but the Army and Korea interrupted his ambitions for the next two years. Returning home in 1955, he studied with Richard Boone, went to New York and then returned to Hollywood where he started to get work-first as a stunt man. Now he still enjoys living dangerously, waging a personal war against sharks off the West Coast, and sometimes killing them with bow and arrow. He also likes hunting mountain lions-again with bow and arrow-as well as �busting broncos,� practising judo, fencing, and staging �fights� with his friends.
But, in spite of-or maybe because of-his many activities, he is still a bachelor!
