Jim Davis (born Marlin Davis, August 26, 1909 – April 26, 1981) was an American actor, best known for his role as Jock Ewing in the CBS prime-time soap opera, Dallas, a role which continued until he was too ill from a terminal illness to perform.
Born Marlin Davis in Edgerton in Platte County in northwestern Missouri, he attended Baptist-affiliated William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri.
His first major screen role was opposite Bette Davis in the 1948 melodrama Winter Meeting, a lavish failure for which he was lambasted in the press as being too inexperienced to play the part properly. His subsequent film career consisted of mostly B movies, many of them westerns, although he made an impression as a U.S. senator in the Warren Beatty conspiracy thriller The Parallax View.
In the episode "Little Washington" of the syndicated television series Death Valley Days, Davis portrayed Mark Tabor, a U.S. representative from Nevada with aspirations to become governor of the new state. Collectively, Davis appeared thirteen times on Death Valley Days. In 1965, Davis played an historical figure, the wagon master Ezra Meeker, who is abandoned by members of his wagon train who decided to stop the trip to Oregon instead to prospect for gold in the episode "Devil's Gate". In 1967, Davis was cast as the freighter Luke Campbell of Deadwood, South Dakota, in the episode "The Day They Stole the Salamander", a reference to a Salamander Safe. In 1969, Davis played Colonel William G. Butler (1831-1912), who takes revenge on the since ghost town of Helena, Texas, after its citizens refuse to disclose the killer of Butler's son, Emmett. Butler arranges for the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway to bypass Helena; instead Karnes City, south of San Antonio, became the seat of government of Karnes County.
James, Jim, Jimmy, or Jamie Davis may refer to:
James L. Davis (July 28, 1928 – November 27, 2012) was an American politician.
Born in Frankfort, Indiana, Davis served in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. He then graduated from Purdue University. Davis served in the Indiana House of Representatives 1982-1998. He died in Frankfort, Indiana.
Jim Davis is an American college basketball coach. He is the current head women's coach at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee. The Tennessee Tech Golden Eagles are members of the Ohio Valley Conference and compete in the NCAA's Division I.