Kurt Russell :When my birthday came up, Bronson got us both skateboards and we rode around the studio lot

Charles Bronson was born 11th of 15 children in the coal region of the Allegheny Mountains in Pennsylvania. His family was so poor that, at one time, he had to wear his sister’s dress to school for lack of clothing. His father died when Bronson was 10, so Bronson went to work in the coal mines, first in the office and then in the mine until he entered the army during World War 2.

In 1962, Bronson was acting in the TV Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, starring 12-year-old Kurt Russell. Kurt found out Bronson’s birthday and gave him a model gas-powered airplane. Bronson took it, didn’t say a word, turned and walked off. The crew consoled Kurt, telling him not to worry about it.

Kurt said, “The assistant director came to me and said Charles wants to see you in his dressing room. I knocked on his door. It opened and he looked down, but not at me. He said, ‘No one has ever given me a birthday gift.’

“When my birthday came up, Bronson got us both skateboards and we rode around the studio lot. Soon I was told to stop skate-boarding by the studio president. Bronson found out about it, grabbed me and we went into the president’s office unannounced.

Bronson said to the president, ‘Kurt and I are going to ride our boards around the studio.’ Bronson turned, I turned, and we walked out of the office. We skate-boarded around the lot from then on and no one said a word.”

Director Boris Sagal’s 1964 Guns of Diablo is a short, simple theatrical feature carved out from a two-part episode of the one-season TV Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (1963-64). Guns of Diablo is an expanded colour version of the series’ final episode The Day of the Reckoning (15 March 1964). Russ Conway appears as Jaimie’s father, ‘Doc’ McPheeters, replacing the TV star Dan O’Herlihy in new sequences. It was released after the series was cancelled.

The 14-year-old Kurt Russell stars as Jaimie McPheeters brushing up against supply-controlling outlaws in the comforting company of wagon train guide scout Linc Murdock (Charles Bronson), who encounters old flame Maria (Susan Oliver), now married to one-armed gunfighter bad guy Rance Macklin (Jan Merlin), one of three nasty brothers.

Berne Giler’s screenplay is based on the 1958 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor.

Also in the cast are Douglas Fowley, John Fiedler, Rayford Barnes as Dan Macklin, Ron Hagerthy as Carey Macklin, Robert Carricart as Ray Macklin, Morris Ankrum, Russ Conway, Maurice Wells, Mike De Anda, Susan Flannery and Byron K Foulger.

Bronson played Linc Murdock in 13 episodes of the series, and Russell starred in all 26 episodes.

It is Morris Ankrum’s final film.

Street shots show a sign for C Nyby Funeral Home, a salute to director Christian Nyby.

Russell made his film debut for an uncredited part in Elvis Presley’s 1963 It Happened at the World’s Fair as Boy Kicking Mike. Walt Disney wrote ‘Kurt Russell’ on a piece of paper in 1966 as his final words. In the late Sixties, Russell signed a ten-year contract with The Walt Disney Company.

Character actor Jan Merlin (1925–2019), who specialised in playing villains, died on 20 September 2019, aged 94.

Guns of Diablo is directed by Boris Sagal, runs 91 minutes, is made by MGM, is written by Berne Giler, based on the novel The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor, is shot in Metrocolor by John M Nickolaus, is produced by Boris Ingster, and scored by Walter Scharf and Leigh Harline.

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