Guy Madison

Guy Madison (January 19, 1922 – February 6, 1996) was an American film and television actor.

Early life

Born Robert Ozell Moseley in Pumpkin Center, California, Madison attended Bakersfield College, a junior college, for two years and then worked briefly as a telephone lineman before joining the United States Navy in 1942 during World War II.

Career

In 1944, while he was visiting Hollywood on leave, the young Navy man's boyish good looks and physique caught the eye of Henry Willson, the head of talent at David O. Selznick's newly formed Vanguard Pictures. Willson was widely known for his stable of good-looking, marginally talented actors with unusual names that he had bestowed upon them, and he immediately rechristened Moseley as Madison and cast him in a bit part as a sailor in Selznick's Since You Went Away. Following the film's release in 1944, the studio received thousands of letters from fans wanting to know more about him.

Madison was signed by RKO Pictures in 1946 and began appearing in romantic comedies and dramas. In 1951 he was cast as the title character in The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, co-starring Andy Devine as his pal, Pete "Jingles" Jones. The series ran for seven years. During the run of the show sixteen feature films were released by Monogram Pictures between 1952 and 1955 that consisted of combined episodes of the series. Following his television series, he appeared in several more films before leaving for Europe, where he found greater success in sword and sandal, spaghetti western and macaroni combat films.