TY HARDIN

(1 January 1930 - 3 August 2017)

The American actor Ty Hardin, who has died aged 87, was a US Army man who made good in Hollywood, beginning in B-pictures from 1958 and then graduating to television. Early films for Paramount included I Married a Monster From Outer Space and Last Train From Gun Hill, before he appeared on TV in Maverick, Cheyenne, 77 Sunset Strip and Tenderfoot, the last introducing the character of Bronco Layne, which then as Bronco ran for 68 episodes. While at Warner Bros he clocked up films including Samuel Fuller’s Merrill’s Marauders, George Cukor’s The Chapman Report, Leslie H. Martinson’s PT 109, Richard Wilson’s Wall of Noise and Norman Taurog’s Palm Springs Weekend. After Battle of the Bulge, Custer of the West and Berserk! (with Joan Crawford), he mostly filmed in Europe and did more TV work, so much so that he had to turn down Batman. He was uncredited as a pilot in Billy Wilder’s Avanti! (1972) and made his last film in 1992, while his final TV appearance came in 1997. He returned, however, briefly as ‘Colonel Sanders’ in The Back-up Bride in 2011. In 1969 he had appeared on stage in the UK in A Streetcar Named Desire with Veronica Lake, but after giving up acting he pursued a career as an extreme right-wing freedom fighter. Born Orison Whipple Hungerford Jr, Ty Hardin had eight wives and ten children.

MICHAEL DARVELL