Handsome American leading man Guy Madison stumbled into a film career and became a television star and hero to the Baby Boom generation As a young man he worked as a telephone lineman but entered the Coast Guard at the beginning of the Second World War While on liberty one weekend in Hollywood he attended a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast and was spotted in the audience by an assistant to Henry Willson an executive for David O Selznick Selznick wanted an unknown sailor to play a small but prominent part in Since You Went Away 1944 and promptly signed Robert Moseley to a contract Selznick and Willson concocted the screen name Guy Madison the guy girls would like to meet and Madison from a passing Dolly Madison cake wagon Madison filmed his one scene on a weekend pass and returned to duty The films release brought thousands of fan letters for Madisons lonely strikingly handsome young sailor and at wars end he returned to find himself a starinthemaking Despite an initial amateurishness to his acting Madison grew as a performer studying and working in theatre He played leads in a series of programmers before being cast as legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickok in the TV series Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok 1951 He played Hickok on TV and radio for much of the 1950s and many of the TV episodes were strung together and released as feature films Madison managed to squeeze in some more adultoriented roles during his offtime from the series but much of this work was also in westerns After the Hickok series ended Madison found work scarce in the US and traveled to Europe where he became a popular star of Italian westerns and German adventure films In the 1970s he returned to the US but appeared mainly in cameo roles Physical ailments limited his work in later years and he died from emphysema in 1996 His first wife was actress Gail Russell Date of Birth 19 January 1922 Pumpkin Center California Date of Death 6 February 1996 Palm Springs California emphysema
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