A Western Bad Boy

Michael Koch

THE ONETIME MATINEE IDOL and Western movie star was born Francis Timothy McCown in Los Angles, California on August 8, 1922. He was of Irish ancestry and grew up in Santa Cruz. His father, James, was a professional gambler who died when Francis was only seven months old. This made life difficult for his mother, Anna, and her children. Anna remarried and Francis occasionally went by the name Frank Durgin, his stepfather’s last name.

By age thirteen, Frank became restless and began committing crimes. He was apprehended for stealing a handgun, convicted and sentenced to serve a brief stint at the California Youth Authority’s Preston School of Industry Reformatory at Ione, California. There he was educated in being a professional criminal. While at an adjustment center jail, Frank escaped. Once sprung, he went on a robbing spree of several jewelry stores as the “ice” was easy to sell for quick cash. However, he soon made a big mistake by stealing an auto and driving it across state lines. He was arrested and convicted. He served just over three years at the United States Medical Center Federal Prison at Springfield, Missouri. One newspaper reported he had served this time at the federal reformatory at El Reno, Oklahoma. Nonetheless, he was paroled shortly after his twenty-first birthday.

IN SPITE OF A CHECKERED PAST AND A “BAD BOY” REPUTATION, THE HANDSOME RORY CALHOUN MADE QUITE A NAME FOR HIMSELF IN HOLLYWOOD.

Trying to start a new life for himself Frank began working at various odd jobs. He took jobs as a boxer, lumberjack, truck driver and even a cowpuncher. In 1943, he met actor Alan Ladd, while riding a horse in the Hollywood Hills. Alan’s wife, Sue Carol was a movie agent and she landed the young man a one-line role in a Laurel and Hardy comedy, The Bullfighters, where he was credited as Frank McCown. Shortly after that, the Ladds hosted a party which the young actor attended. Also, at the party was an employee of David O. Selznick, Henry Willson. Willson was a Hollywood talent agent known for helping young, handsome and marginally talented actors. Willson had played a large role in developing the beefcake craze during the 1950s with actors like Tab Hunter, Guy Madison and Rock Hudson. He took a liking to the tall and handsome Frank McCown, but not his name. Willson signed the young actor to a contract and changed his name to “Rory Calhoun.”

Willson immediately began to groom his new client by having him escort actress Lana Turner to the premiere of Alfred Hitchcock’s new Selznick production Spellbound in 1945. The couple’s appearance attracted Hollywood’s paparazzi, and their image appeared in newspapers and fan magazines. Selznick began to loan out his contract player to other studios. This gave Calhoun exposure in three films starring established actors; Rhonda Fleming, Edward G. Robinson, and Shirley Temple.

By 1947, Rory’s career began to gain momentum due to being seen in three films, followed by one more the next year. In 1949, he co-starred alongside Guy Madison in the western, Massacre River. The plot was about two army officers competing for the hand of a colonel’s daughter, which changed when a Native American tribe attacked making the rivals become brothers-in-arms. The exposure brought Rory to star in more westerns, musicals and comedies. He co-starred in flicks with Gene Tierney, Susan Hayward and two films with Marilyn Monroe.

Willson dominated his rising star by arranging his social life and even ended his engagement to French actress Corinne Calvet. In 1955, Willson disclosed Calhoun’s years as a criminal and the fact that Rory had served a prison term to Confidential magazine. In exchange for this tidbit the tabloid would never publish a story on the secret homosexual life of Rock Hudson. This didn’t seem to have a negative effect on Calhoun’s career and seemed to solidify his “bad boy” image.

That same year, Rory starred alongside rugged and prematurely greying actor Jeff Chandler and sexy Ray Danton in The Spoilers.

The next three years saw Calhoun in ten films, mostly westerns. One non-western worth watching was a suspense noir called The Big Caper. In this action film, Rory played a bad guy who is transformed into a hero at the end.

Rory and his partner Victor Orsatti formed Rorvic, a production company, in 1957. Rory made and starred in two films; The Hired Gun and Apache Territory.

The following year Calhoun co-produced and starred in the CBS western television series, The Texan, which could be watched on Monday evenings. He portrayed fast-gun hero Big Bill Longley in the series.

The series only lasted until 1960 due to Calhoun’s desire to solely concentrate on films. Rory continued to produce and write screenplays throughout his career, and he became an astute businessman. He owned several bars, a hotel rug business in Beverly Hills, and owned a huge ranch in nearby Ojai.

This turned out to be Rory’s low point as a screen personality. He made several stinkers from 1960 to 1964. It appears he took on roles that just didn’t fit him. Realizing this, he went back to what he knew best, westerns.

His daughter Athena stated, “I suppose, if my father were not an actor, he would have been a cowboy, because he loved the outdoors so much. He did not like enclosed areas. He loved the freedom the outdoors offered.”

Now back in the saddle, Rory made five westerns from 1965-1966. The best of these was Apache Uprising, released just after Christmas in 1965. The cast included John Russell, Corinne Calvet, Arthur Hunnicutt, Johnny Mack Brown, Jean Parker, DeForest Kelley, and Lon Chaney, Jr. Rory was the hero who fought Native Americans and crooks who had planned a series of stagecoach robberies in what’s been described as a routine western. He also defended the honor of a woman wrongly accused of having a poor reputation. Interestingly, DeForest Kelley played a crazed gunman in his pre-Star Trek television role.

Also, in 1965, Rory had one more chance at a new television western series as he was considered for the lead of James West in the series, The Wild Wild West, but the producers were not impressed with his screen test and instead chose Robert Conrad.

Calhoun, like many actors of the 1960s, appeared in several films in Europe. One to note was The Colossus of Rhodes, the first film by Sergio Leone, who would gain fame for his spaghetti westerns.

By the late 1960s, Rory’s career as a western film star was in decline. He began to accept minor roles in meaningless projects such as Night of the Lepus and Revenge of Bigfoot.

However, in 1980, he was offered a part in the campy horror flick, Motel Hell, which is now considered a cult classic. He followed that by playing western hero Kit Carson in Angel in 1984, followed by Avenging Angel, the following year.

Calhoun continued to appear in television and movie roles during the 1970s and 1980s, which included; Hawaii Five-O, Alias Smith and Jones, and Starsky & Hutch. Rory starred in a regular daytime soap opera called Capitol, which he had accepted after regrettably turning down a part on CBS’s huge television hit, Dallas.

Rory’s final role was that of a rancher in the movie Pure Country in 1992.

Rory Calhoun was married twice and had five daughters, three by his first wife Lita Baron, and one with actress Vitina Marcus, and one with his second wife, Susan Langley.

Lita Baron was a Spanish-born American actress and singer. She and Rory married in 1948 and their relationship lasted until she sued Calhoun for divorce. Lita was tired of his adulterous relationships and even named, actress Betty Grable as one of seventynine women her husband had had an extramarital relationship with. Rory replied to her charge by saying, “heck, she didn’t even include half of them.” The couple were granted a divorce in 1970.

In 1966, an actress named Vinita Marcus filed a paternity suit against Rory. She claimed the couple had a child together, Athena Marcus Calhoun, in 1959. Both were married at the time of the suit. The suit was settled in Los Angeles Superior Court for an undisclosed sum of money.

In April of 1971 Calhoun married Susan Langley, a journalist. They had one child and divorced five years later.

In the end Rory had starred in over 80 motion pictures and was in 1,000 television episodes. “By and large, I suppose my image is Western,” he told The LA Times in 1979. “If the two or three dozen Western features I made didn’t do it, the 79 episodes of my television series, The Texan, certainly set it. You could say there were more B Westerns than A Westerns, but even so, I always enjoyed putting on the hat, strapping on the gun and feeling like a kid again.”

Calhoun had several connections in Nevada. Before becoming an actor, he mined silver near Reno. In April, 1981, during a low point in his career, he came to Las Vegas to coach a team of female mud wrestlers against another team, which was coincidently coached by hard luck actor Adam (“Batman”) West. Calhoun’s team won the event held at the Imperial Palace.

Rory Calhoun passed away on April 28, 1999, in Burbank, California, at the age of seventy-six from complications resulting from emphysema and diabetes.

Calhoun’s career is recognized by two stars; one on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Hollywood Blvd. for his contribution to film and a second star on Vine Street for his work in television.

—Michael Koch has penned two nonfictional books. He’s a member of The Tulsa NightWriters, Ozark Writers League, Ozark Creative Writers, and the Oklahoma Writers’ Federation, Inc. His short stories have been published in Echoes of the Ozarks, Mysteries of the Ozarks, Frontier Tales, Wicked East Press, and the Southeast Missouri State University Press. He lives in Coweta, Oklahoma and is a regular contibutor to Saddlebag Dispatches.