he towering, strapping Walker played Cheyenne Bodie, who traveled the West and handed down justice on the TV series that ran for seven seasons starting in 1955.
actor Van Johnson said he should try his luck in Hollywood.
With just one uncredited role on his reel, Walker was driving to meet renowned director Cecil B. DeMille in the early ’50s when he saw a woman stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire. He stopped to help, then realized when he showed up for his meeting with DeMille that the woman was his secretary.
He got the role of a Sardinian captain in 1956’s “The Ten Commandments.” Warner Bros. bought his contract and almost immediately he received the lead role in “Cheyenne.” However, he became increasingly dissatisfied with how Warner Bros. was handling his career, and he left the show in 1958.
He planned to move back to Belleville to join his twin sister, Lucy, and help her run the Walker-Westbrook Health Foods company that Lucy was running out of her home. But he gave Warner Bros. one last chance to make a deal. He held out for nine months, then agreed to rejoin the show with a pay raise and the freedom to do films in his spare time.
In addition to “Cheyenne,” he had small but visible roles in classic films, including “The Ten Commandments” and 1967’s “The Dirty Dozen.” He most recently lent his voice to 1998’s “Small Soldiers.”
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