Bill Elliott

William Clyde "Bill" Elliott (born October 8, 1955), also known as Wild Bill, Awesome Bill from Dawsonville, or Million Dollar Bill, is a retired NASCAR driver. He won the 1988 Winston Cup Championship and has garnered 44 wins in that series, including two Daytona 500 victories in 1985 and 1987 and a record four consecutive wins at Michigan International Speedway between 1985 and 1986. He holds the track record for fastest qualifying speed at Talladega at 212.809 mph and Daytona International Speedway at 210.364 mph, both of which were set in 1987; the mark at Talladega has since been the fastest speed for any NASCAR race ever.

Elliott won NASCAR's Most Popular Driver Award a record 16 times. He withdrew his name from the ballot for that award after winning it in 2002. In 2005, Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue declared October 8 as Bill Elliott Day in the state of Georgia. He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America on August 15, 2007 and into the 2015 class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Elliott has also been honored by the state legislature with a stretch of roadway in his native Dawsonville renamed Elliott Family Parkway.

Wild Bill Elliott

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 in the Red Ryder series of films.

Early life

Elliott was born Gordon A. Nance in Pattonsburg, Missouri, the son of cattle broker Leroy "Roy" Whitfield Nance and his wife, the former Maude Myrtle Auldridge.

The young Nance grew up within twenty miles of his birthplace, most of his youth spent on a ranch near King City, Missouri. His father was a cattle rancher and commissioner buyer for the Kansas City stockyards. Riding and roping were part of Gordon Nance's upbringing. He won first place in a rodeo event in the 1920 American Royal livestock show. He briefly attended Rockhurst College, a Jesuit school in Kansas City, but soon left for California with hopes of becoming an actor.

Career

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, and in it, played 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 extra roles and bit parts, as in 1929's Broadway Scandals. For the next eight years, he appeared in over a hundred films for various studios, but almost always in unbilled extra parts.

Billy Elliot (disambiguation)

Billy Elliot is a 2000 film produced by the BBC.

Billy Elliot or Elliott may also refer to:

See also