“Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’…” If you can hear Frankie Laine’s voice and the crack of that whip right now, you probably spent Friday nights in front of Rawhide. Dimitri Tiomkin wrote the music and Ned Washington wrote the words, and the song became so much a part of American life that it turned up again in The Blues Brothers in 1980, sung to a room full of angry country fans who suddenly loved it.
The show itself premiered on CBS on January 9, 1959, and followed trail boss Gil Favor and his drovers as they pushed a herd from San Antonio toward Sedalia, Missouri. It ran for 217 black-and-white episodes, climbed as high as No. 6 in the Nielsen ratings during the 1960-61 season, and turned a young unknown named Clint Eastwood into a star. CBS pulled it after 13 episodes of an eighth season in December 1965. Six decades later, only one of the men who rode that trail is still with us.
Is Eric Fleming Still Alive?
Eric Fleming was the boss, and Gil Favor was the role that made him. Born Edward Heddy Jr. on July 4, 1925, in Santa Paula, California, he survived a rough childhood and a serious Navy injury that left him needing extensive plastic surgery on his face. He found his way to Broadway, where he worked in the musical Plain and Fancy, before CBS put him in the saddle for seven seasons.
In late 1963, Fleming turned down an offer to star in an Italian Western called A Fistful of Dollars, and that role went to his co-star instead. Then, during the summer break in 1965, CBS let him go as a new producer tried to rescue the ratings. Fleming joked to TV Guide that “CBS fired me because they were paying me a million dollars a year,” though his salary was closer to $220,000.
He moved quickly into Doris Day’s comedy The Glass Bottom Boat and three episodes of Bonanza. Sadly, Eric Fleming is not alive. On September 28, 1966, while filming a TV adventure called “High Jungle” in Peru, his dugout canoe overturned on the Huallaga River. Co-star Nico Minardos swam to safety, but Fleming was swept away by the current and drowned. He was 41 and, according to People, engaged to Lynne Garber at the time.
Is James Murdock Still Alive?
Every cattle drive needs somebody to take the blame when the beans burn, and on Rawhide that was Harkness “Mushy” Mushgrove III, the cook’s eager young helper. James Murdock was born David Lee Baker on June 22, 1931, in Normal, Illinois, and his first screen role was a young outlaw on Have Gun – Will Travel in 1958. A year later he was ducking Wishbone’s ladle, and he stayed through more than 200 episodes.
After the show ended he worked less often, taking a guest spot on Gunsmoke in 1966 and going back to his birth name for small film parts, including a role in The Godfather Part II in 1974. James Murdock died on December 24, 1981, in California at just 50 years old, only 16 days after another member of the crew.
Is Rocky Shahan Still Alive?
That crew member was Rocky Shahan, the drover Joe Scarlet. Born Robert Ray Shahan on March 4, 1919, in Corinth, Texas, he came to Hollywood as a stuntman and horseman, which is why you so often saw him on the reins of a stagecoach on shows like Gunsmoke. He had also ridden in Cattle Empire, the 1958 Western that helped inspire Rawhide.
Shahan stayed with the drive from 1959 to 1965 and kept working in Westerns until the end of the decade before going home to Texas. Rocky Shahan died on December 8, 1981, in Denton, Texas, at 62.
Is Paul Brinegar Still Alive?
Before he was Wishbone, Paul Brinegar played a crusty trail cook named Tom Jefferson Jeffrey in that same Cattle Empire, and the part fit him so well that Rawhide built a character around it. Born December 19, 1917, in Tucumcari, New Mexico, he had already spent two years as Mayor Dog Kelley of Dodge City on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. George Washington Wishbone, grumbling over his chuck wagon, was the role he would be remembered for, and he was one of only a handful of actors who lasted all eight seasons.
He stayed in the West afterward, playing Jelly Hoskins on Lancer from 1968 to 1970. In 1973 he turned up as the barman in High Plains Drifter, which was directed by his old trail partner, Clint Eastwood. His last role was a stagecoach driver in Mel Gibson’s Maverick in 1994. Paul Brinegar died of emphysema in Los Angeles on March 27, 1995, at 77, and the Los Angeles Times ran his obituary under the simple headline “Appeared in TV’s ‘Rawhide.'”
Is Steve Raines Still Alive?
Steve Raines did not have to learn to look like a cowboy. Born June 17, 1916, in Grants Pass, Oregon, he worked as a real rodeo rider and stuntman before he ever spoke a line, and People described him as a working cowboy who kept his life private. As drover Jim Quince he appeared in almost every episode, and when Favor left in the final season, Quince moved up to ramrod.
Raines kept guest-starring on TV Westerns into the 1970s, with his last known appearance on Gunsmoke in 1974. He went home to Grants Pass in 1986, and Steve Raines died there on January 4, 1996, at 79.
Is Sheb Wooley Still Alive?
Scout Pete Nolan rode ahead of the herd, and the man who played him already had a hit record. Sheb Wooley, born April 10, 1921, in Erick, Oklahoma, had played the outlaw Ben Miller in High Noon, and in 1958 his novelty song “The Purple People Eater” went to No. 1 and stayed there for weeks. He left Rawhide in early 1962, and the show explained that Nolan was off scouting for the Army before bringing him back for nine episodes in season seven.
Wooley never stopped working. He recorded comic country songs as his drunken alter ego Ben Colder, wrote the theme song for Hee Haw and joined its cast, and his widow, Linda, later confirmed that he was the voice behind the famous “Wilhelm scream” heard in Star Wars and hundreds of other films. He was diagnosed with leukemia in 1996, and Sheb Wooley died of the disease in Nashville on September 16, 2003, at 82, NPR reported.
Is Robert Cabal Still Alive?
Every drive needed someone to tend the horses, and on Rawhide that job belonged to the wrangler “Hey Soos” Patines, played by Robert Cabal in 115 episodes. Born April 7, 1917, in Honolulu, Cabal had a face that let Hollywood cast him as almost any nationality without makeup, and before Rawhide he had played the bandit Joaquin Murrieta in The Man Behind the Gun. Some episodes had Hey Soos facing prejudice from strangers outside the outfit.
Cabal kept guest-starring on shows like The Big Valley until 1967 and then stepped away from acting. Robert Cabal died in Los Angeles on May 11, 2004, at 87.
Are John Ireland And Raymond St. Jacques Still Alive?
When CBS rebuilt the show for its last season in 1965, it brought in fresh faces to ride alongside the remaining crew. The biggest name was John Ireland, born January 30, 1914, in Vancouver, who had earned an Oscar nomination for All the King’s Men and had ridden alongside John Wayne in Red River. He played the scout Jed Colby. Ireland kept acting into the 1990s and also ran a restaurant in Santa Barbara, California. He died of leukemia there on March 21, 1992, at 78.
Raymond St. Jacques, born James Arthur Johnson on March 1, 1930, in Hartford, Connecticut, made history as the rider Simon Blake, becoming the first Black actor cast as a regular on a prime-time Western series. He went on to star in Cotton Comes to Harlem in 1970 and to play Frederick Douglass in Glory in 1989. He died of lymphoma in Los Angeles on August 27, 1990, at 60. The third newcomer, David Watson, played the young Englishman Ian Cabot in five episodes and later took over the role of Cornelius in Beneath the Planet of the Apes. He died of a heart attack in New York on October 5, 2014, at 74.
Is Clint Eastwood Still Alive?
That leaves Rowdy Yates. Clint Eastwood was born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, and he was a struggling actor with a few small film parts behind him when CBS cast him as Favor’s hot-headed ramrod in 1958. He did his own riding and fighting, and the long days on the trail gave him his first itch to be behind the camera. “I thought, we should get right in the middle of this damn stampede,” he remembered in a 1999 collection of his interviews, as Slashfilm recounted. He even asked Fleming whether he would mind if he directed an episode, but “CBS said no more series actors could direct their own shows.”
He found his own way out. The Italian Western Fleming turned down became Eastwood’s, and A Fistful of Dollars made him a movie star while he was still on the drive. “In Rawhide I did get awfully tired of playing the conventional white hat,” he later admitted. When Fleming was fired, Eastwood took over as trail boss for the final season, and then came Dirty Harry, Unforgiven, Million Dollar Baby and more than five decades of directing.
Yes, Clint Eastwood is still alive, and he is 96 years old. His most recent film as a director was Juror #2 in 2024. In June, reports quoting his son Kyle said his father had retired, but his son Scott said he had not heard that from his father, and we covered that family back-and-forth as it happened. As recently as November 1, ScreenRant was writing about the “96-year-old” Eastwood as his World War II film Flags of Our Fathers arrived on free streaming. He is the last man left from the drive, and when that whip cracks and Frankie Laine starts singing, Rowdy Yates is still the youngest face in the herd. If you want more trail dust, here are the best classic TV Westerns of the ’50s and ’60s.
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