John Russell
John Russell is an actor, born 1921.
Russell signed with 20th Century Fox in 1945 and the credit list still opens exactly where the studio filed him: a guard, uncredited, in A Royal Scandal. Fox used him as furniture for three years, a policeman in The Dark Corner, a marine captain in Somewhere in the Night, before giving him a name and a suit as the junior law partner Bill Philby in the Clifton Webb comedy Sitting Pretty. A bit part in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington sits at the front of the list from 1939, but the working career starts at Fox.
The face was the asset. Tall, flat-eyed, immovable, it made him a mediocre romantic lead and an excellent heavy, and the westerns took him: Lengthy in Yellow Sky, Lieutenant Dickinson in The Last Command, the Sioux chief Gall in Yellowstone Kelly, Travis in Fort Massacre, Vance Buckner in Apache Uprising. The best of that run is Nathan Burdette in Rio Bravo, the rancher who owns the town and never raises his voice while his men do the shooting.
Television made him a lead. He was Tim Kelly in the syndicated Soldiers of Fortune from 1955 to 1957, then Marshal Dan Troop in ABC's Lawman from 1958 to 1962, four years of a peace officer whose method was largely standing still. Neither series is why the face survived, though. Clint Eastwood kept hiring him: Bloody Bill Anderson in The Outlaw Josey Wales in 1976, a part in Honkytonk Man in 1982, and finally Stockburn, the black-coated marshal of Pale Rider in 1985, the last of the three and comfortably the best. Russell died in 1991.
Movies (14)
- Rio Bravo (1959)
- Pale Rider (1985)
- The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)
- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
- Honkytonk Man (1982)
- Somewhere in the Night (1946)
- Yellowstone Kelly (1959)
- Yellow Sky (1948)
- Fort Massacre (1958)
- Sitting Pretty (1948)
- The Dark Corner (1946)
- The Last Command (1955)
- Apache Uprising (1965)
- A Royal Scandal (1945)
TV (3)
Where to start with John Russell
Go to Rio Bravo first. Russell plays Nathan Burdette, the man who owns the town, and the performance is built entirely on refusing to perform: no menace applied, none needed. Howard Hawks knew what he had.
Pale Rider is the payoff twenty-six years later, Stockburn in black, barely speaking, an old face used as an object. Between the two sits The Outlaw Josey Wales, where Eastwood cast him as the Confederate raider Bloody Bill Anderson. For the series that actually made him famous, Lawman holds up better than most of the 1958 television western wave, because Dan Troop is written stubborn rather than heroic. And if you want the contract player before the face hardened, Sitting Pretty and Yellow Sky are the two worth your time, the first as light comedy, the second as a properly nasty little western.