Frederica Jacqueline Wilson (1951–1956; divorced); 1 daughter Mary Murphy (1956–1956; annulled) Lula Mae Robertson (m. 1959–1977); two daughters [citation needed]
Susan Robbins Robertson (married 1980–2013; his death)[1]
Children
3
Dayle Lymoine Robertson (July 14, 1923 – February 27, 2013) was an American actor best known for his starring roles on television. He played the roving investigator Jim Hardie in the television series Tales of Wells Fargo and railroad owner Ben Calhoun in Iron Horse. He often was presented as a deceptively thoughtful but modest Western hero. From 1968 to 1970, Robertson was the fourth and final host of the anthology seriesDeath Valley Days. Described by Time magazine in 1959 as "probably the best horseman on television",[2] for most of his career, Robertson played in western films and television shows—well over 60 titles in all.
During this time Columbia Pictures offered to test Robertson for the lead in their film version of Golden Boy, but Robertson turned down the trip to Hollywood for a screen test. He didn't want to leave the ponies he was training, nor his home,[4] and the role went to William Holden.
Robertson began his acting career by chance when he was in the army. When he was stationed at San Luis Obispo, California, Robertson's mother asked him to have a portrait taken for her because she didn't have one; so he and several other soldiers went to Hollywood to find a photographer. A large copy of his photo was displayed in his mother's living room window.[3] He found himself receiving letters from film agents who wished to represent him. After the war, Robertson's war wounds prevented him from resuming his boxing career. He stayed in California to try his hand at acting. Hollywood actor Will Rogers Jr., gave him this advice: "Don't ever take a dramatic lesson. They will try to put your voice in a dinner jacket, and people like their hominy and grits in everyday clothes." Robertson thereafter avoided formal acting lessons.[3]
Popular acclaim to Robertson's brief roles led him to be signed to a seven-year contract to 20th Century Fox. Robertson's first role for Fox was a support part in a Western, Two Flags West (1951). He had a support part in the musical Call Me Mister (1951). He soon advanced to leading roles in films such as Take Care of My Little Girl (1951), where he played Jeanne Crain's love interest, and Golden Girl (1951), where he supported Mitzi Gaynor.
Robertson was never very cooperative with the press, even shunning the powerful columnist Louella Parsons.[7] As a result, he won the press' Sour Apple Award for three years running. But then, commented Robertson, "that dang Sinatra had to hit some photographer in the nose and stop me from getting my fourth."[6]
Tales of Wells Fargo, his best-remembered series, aired on NBC from 1957 to 1961, when it moved to ABC and expanded to an hour-long program for its final season in 1961–1962. The show originally was produced by Nat Holt whom Robertson felt he owed his career to for giving him his first leading roles.[9] Robertson used his own horse, Jubilee, throughout the run of the series.[citation needed]
Robertson also did the narration for Tales of Wells Fargo through which he often presented his own commentary on matters of law, morality, and common sense. He was unique among his television contemporaries, stating that he hated the gun he was forced to carry, but saw it as a necessary evil, a "tool of the trade", and kept practicing.
In its cover story on television westerns, published March 30, 1959, Time reported Robertson was 6 feet tall, weighed 180 pounds, and measured 42–34–34. He sometimes made use of his physique in "beefcake" scenes, such as one in 1952's Return of the Texan where he is seen bare-chested and sweaty, repairing a fence.[2]
In 1963, after Tales of Wells Fargo ended its five-year run, he played the lead role in the first of A.C. Lyles' Law of the Lawless. The film was initially set to star Rory Calhoun, but Calhoun came down with pneumonia the night before the production was set to start filming. Dale Robertson, star of the television series, Tales of Wells Fargo, stepped in at six hours' notice.[12] Lyles had acquired the friendship and respect of a galaxy of experienced actors who offered their services to his production.
Robertson filmed a television pilot; about Diamond Jim Brady that was not picked up as a series.
Robertson created United Screen Arts in 1965[13] which released two of his films, The Man from Button Willow (1965, animated) that he did the voice for and The One Eyed Soldiers (1966) which he starred in.
In the 1966–67 season, Robertson starred in Scalplock another television pilot released as a movie that became Iron Horse, in which his character wins an incomplete railroad line in a poker game and then decides to manage the company.[3]
In 1968, he succeeded Robert Taylor as the host of Death Valley Days, a role formerly held by Stanley Andrews and future U.S. PresidentRonald W. Reagan. The series would come to its end, after 19 years on the air, with Robertson's 26 episodes as host. In rebroadcasts, Death Valley Days (often known as Trails West at the time), featured Ray Milland in the role of revised host.
Robertson guest-starred on the November 17, 1969, episode of The Dean Martin Show.
Later career
In 1970 he had the lead playing a US Army Major in the Japanese film Aru heishi no kake.
Robertson guest-starred as himself in the episode "Little Orphan Airplane" of The Six Million Dollar Man in 1974.
In 1981, Robertson was in the original starring cast of Dynasty, playing Walter Lankershim, a character who disappeared after the first season.
In 1983, Robertson made Big John, another television pilot, where he played a Georgia sheriff who becomes a New York Police Department detective.[14] In 1987, he starred as the title character on J.J. Starbuck. Robertson also played Frank Crutcher in five episodes of the TV series Dallas during the 1982–83 season.
In December 1993 and January 1994, Robertson appeared in two episodes of Harts of the West in the role of Zeke Terrell.[15] During an appearance on The Tonight Show, Robertson said he was of Cherokee ancestry. He joked, "I am the tribe's West Coast distributor."
Robertson played a central part in two episodes of Murder, She Wrote with Angela Lansbury but he was not credited in either appearance.
In 1999, Robertson won the award for film and television from the American Cowboy Culture Association in Lubbock, Texas.[16]
In the last few years before his death, Robertson hosted a radio program called Little Known Facts, which was broadcast on 400 radio stations.
Death
In his later years, Robertson and his wife, Susan Robbins, who married in 1980, lived on his ranch in Yukon, Oklahoma, where it was reported he owned 235 horses at one time, with five mares foaling grand champions. Due to his declining health, he relocated to the San Diego area in what would be his final months, passing away at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, California, on February 27, 2013, from lung cancer and pneumonia.[17][18]
