June 18: Paladin

Richard Boone, the son of a Jewish mother (and, on his father’s side, a descendant of Daniel Boone), who became a national television star playing Paladin, the hired gun, on Have Gun — Will Travel, was born in Los Angeles on this date in 1917. The pockmarked and deep-voiced actor appeared in more than fifty films and television shows, most often playing the role of the villain, after Paladin retired his six-shooters in 1963. In the 1960s and ’70s Boone visited Israel numerous times to assist the nascent Israeli film industry — for which he received an award in 1979 from Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Boone also starred in the Israeli film set in a location other than Israel: Madron, a 1970 Western in which Israeli actors played Native Americans. Boone died at only 63 in 1981. To see an episode of Have Gun — Will Travel, look below.

“I give out lots of the calling cards Paladin uses in the stories, which are lettered ‘Have Gun — Will Travel’ and say underneath, ‘Wire Paladin, San Francisco.’ At the last count I had disposed of around 84,000 of them” —Richard Boone