Morgan Woodward

Morgan Woodward was a character actor who worked in film and on television for nearly 50 years. He was born on September 16, 1925, in Fort Worth, and his early career was dominated by Westerns on both big screen and small. Woodward's first year of screen acting, in 1956, found him on an episode of TV's "Zane Grey Theater," and in the family film drama "Westward Ho the Wagons!." The following year, he began a record number of guest appearances on the classic television Western, "Gunsmoke," as Bear Sanderson, appearing in 19 episodes from 1957 to 1974. In 1958, Woodward began another frequently-recurring Western gig, as Shotgun Gibbs on "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp." He also landed stints on "Wagon Train" in the late '50s and early '60s, and as Deputy Sheriff Rick Conley on eight episodes of "Bonanza," spread out across the 1960s. On film, Woodward's greatest role was arguably that of Boss Godfrey in the classic, 1967 prison drama "Cool Hand Luke" with Paul Newman. Among Woodward's numerous list of supporting television roles through the 1970s, '80s and well into the '90s, his most prolific was that of Marvin Anderson on the landmark primetime soap "Dallas," where he appeared from 1980 to '87. After quietly retiring in 1998, Morgan Woodward died on February 22, 2019 at his home near Los Angeles. He was 93.