Wild Bill Elliott

 Wild Bill Elliott (October 16, 1904 – November 26, 1965)

He specialized in playing the rugged heroes of B Westerns, particularly the Red Ryder series of films. He took classes at the Pasadena Playhouse and appeared in a few stage roles there. By 1927, he had made his first Western, The Arizona Wildcat, playing his first featured role. Several co-starring roles followed, and he renamed himself Gordon Elliott. But as the studios made the transition to sound films, he slipped back into roles as an extra and bit parts, as in Broadway Scandals, in 1929. For the next eight years, he appeared in over a hundred films for various studios, but almost always in unbilled parts as an extra. Elliott began to be noticed in some minor B Westerns, enough so that Columbia Pictures offered him the title role in a serial, The Great Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1938). The serial was so successful, and Elliott so personable, that Columbia promoted him to starring in his own series of Western features, replacing Columbia's number-two cowboy star Robert "Tex" Allen. Henceforth Gordon Elliott would be known as Bill Elliott. Within two years, he was among the Motion Picture Herald's Top Ten Western Stars, where he would remain for the next 15 years. In 1943, Elliott signed with Republic Pictures, which cast him in a series of Westerns alongside George "Gabby" Hayes. The first of these, Calling Wild Bill Elliott, gave Elliott the name by which he would be best known and by which he would be billed almost exclusively for the rest of his career. Elliott's career thrived during and after the Red Ryder films, and he continued making B Westerns into the early 1950s. He also had his own radio show during the late 1940s.

His final contract as a Western star was with Monogram Pictures, where budgets declined as the B Western lost its audience to television. Elliott soon retired, except for his time as a spokesman for Viceroy cigarettes and hosting a local TV program in Las Vegas, Nevada, which featured many of his Western films. Elliott died from lung cancer at age 61 on November 26, 1965 and is interred at Palm Downtown Mortuary/Cemetery in Las Vegas.