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June 18: Paladin

lawrencebush
June 18, 2014

PSJTD00ZRichard 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