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So, here’s a question to kick us off: Can a man and his horse be so in sync that they become an iconic duo of old-school TV Western lore? Randy Boone, the singing, guitar-strumming cowpoke who actually rode his own horse on NBC’s The Virginian, just rode off into the sunset at age 83. Born under the determined gaze of Capricorn, Boone’s journey was all about perseverance and a bit of that stubborn star sign grit that saw him hitchhike across America before landing his role in television history. He wasn’t just a pretty face with a guitar; he was the guy who stuck around long enough to make audiences fall in love with his character Randy Benton—and oh, did he have stories, from one-season wonders like It’s a Man’s World to traversing time in The Twilight Zone. Today, as the stars linger in a reflective phase, we say goodbye to a genuine TV cowboy who lived his part wholly—even if a studio exec thought he was “window dressing.” Here’s to the man who made his horse nearly as famous as he was and reminded us all there’s magic in mixing music, grit, and a dash of Hollywood luck. LEARN MORE
Randy Boone, who rode his own horse and portrayed the singing and guitar-playing ranch hand Randy Benton on the long-running NBC series The Virginian, has died. He was 83.
Boone died Thursday, his wife, Lana, told The Hollywood Reporter. She did not want to divulge any other details.
The North Carolina native also was a regular on two other 1960s series, but each of those lasted just one season: the 1962-63 NBC comedy-drama It’s a Man’s World and the 1967-68 CBS Western Cimarron Strip, starring Stuart Whitman.
And in the 1963 Twilight Zone episode “The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms,” Boone starred as one of the National Guardsmen (Warren Oates and Ron Foster are the others) who somehow are sent back in time to take part in the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
A contract player at Universal, Boone joined The Virginian, which starred James Drury and Doug McClure, midway through its second season in February 1964. He stuck around for 46 episodes through the end of the fourth season in April 1966 before he was let go.
“I was told that [producer] Frank [Price] thought I was window dressing and wasn’t needed on the show, but I feel that I was needed as much as anybody,” he said in Paul Green’s 2006 book, A History of Television’s The Virginian, 1962-1971.
“I think a show suffers when you make big changes and you lose the actors that caused the people to fall in love with it.”
Clyde Randy Boone was born Jan. 17, 1942, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He graduated from Fayetteville Senior High School in 1960 and spent a brief time at North Carolina State College in Raleigh, where he played guitar at house parties and rarely went to class.
He told Green that he had a plan. “I’m going to take my guitar and I’m going to hitchhike around the country and have some fun until the Army drafts me and then I’ll let them beat some discipline into me,” he said. “I couldn’t wait to get out of school and have a good time.”
After traveling around the country for 18 months, he ended up in Los Angeles in 1962. When someone he was playing music with told him a TV producer was looking for a young man to play a folk-singing college student on a new series called on It’s a Man’s World, he auditioned and was hired.
Boone signed a contract with Universal Studios and was cast as Vern Hodges, who shares a houseboat on the Ohio River with two friends (Glenn Corbett, Ted Bessell) on It’s a Man’s World.
The show, though admired by critics, was canceled after just four months on the air amid tough competition. Boone and future That Girl star Bessell went across the country on a barnstorming campaign to save it, to no avail.
Boone was advised that knowing how to ride a horse would come in handy in the age of TV Westerns, so he bought one named Clyde and became an expert rider. That skill — and the fact he was still under contract — led Price to sign him up for The Virginian.
Boone said he would let Universal use his horse for free if he could board him at the studio, and executives agreed. He noted that Clyde wasn’t a Hollywood-trained animal, so “he acted very much like a real horse, and I got a lot of fan mail about how he didn’t stand still.”
Boone was introduced to viewers of The Virginian on the episode “First to Thine Own Self,” which premiered in February 1964. His character, a drifter, finds a home at Shiloh and a friend in Betsy Garth (Roberta Shore) after he protects a young girl whose father had been murdered.
Boone said that he wrote many of the songs that he performed on the show, saying he wanted to “feel like I’m putting something special into the work.” He signed away the rights to the songs but was surprised and delighted to receive royalties years later.
Randy Boone on the set of ‘The Virginian’ in 1965.
Gene Trindl/TV Guide/Courtesy Everett Collection
(He and Shore were featured on a 1965 Decca album, The Singing Stars of The Virginian, and he followed with a solo effort, Ramblin Randy.)
He played deputy U.S. marshal/aspiring reporter Francis Wilde on Cimarron Strip.
Boone also showed up on episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Wagon Train, Bonanza, The Fugitive, Combat!, Hondo, Emergency!, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Kung Fu, Gunsmoke and Highway to Heaven and in such films as Country Boy (1966), Terminal Island (1973), Dr. Minx (1975) and The Wild Pair (1987).
He left acting in the late 1980s and worked in construction.
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