11 minute read
Three We Lost
Celebrating Donald Sutherland, Barbara Rush, and Shelly Duvall
In 2024, we saw the passing of three actors familiar to fans of the western entertainment genre. Donald Sutherland, Barbara Rush, and Shelly Duvall, who all appeared in a multitude of acting roles throughout their respective careers, made several contributions each in western television shows and films.
DONALD SUTHERLAND
Donald McNichol Sutherland was born on July 17, 1935, at Saint John General Hospital in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada to parents, Dorothy and Frederick Sutherland. As a young boy, Donald had Rheumatic Fever, Hepatitis and Polio causing him to endure many hardships. He spent his teenage years at Bridgewater, Nova Scotia, Canada, where at 14, he was a news correspondent for radio station CKBW. Donald attended the University of Toronto later transferring to Victoria University, where he met his first wife Lois May Hardwick.
Donald left Canada in 1957 and moved to Britain, where he studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. He found work in Scotland at the Perth Repertory Theatre and British TV, and even managed to secure some small movie roles in horror films.
Sutherland’s first big break came in 1962 when he appeared in two episodes of the television series The Saint with Roger Moore. The connections he made from the show garnered Donald his first significant role in a Hollywood production, The Dirty Dozen in 1967. The movie starred several major stars including Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson, Clint Walker and Ernest Borgnine. The movie told the story of a band of misfit GI’s operating secretly behind the German lines in World War II. After the success of the film, Donald left England to make his new home in California.
In Hollywood, Sutherland found steady work. His next big break came in 1970 when he played two bizarre characters in the hit films M.A.S.H. and Kelly’s Heroes. In Kelly’s Heroes, Donald played Oddball opposite Clint Eastwood and Telly Savalas. Oddball was a dope smoking tank commander in Patton’s Army, who would go to any lengths to avoid action. While filming in Yugoslavia, he contracted Spinal Meningitis which was nearly fatal due to the lack of antibiotics at the local hospital.
In M.A.S.H., Sutherland co-starred with Eliott Gould, Robert Duvall, and Sally Kellerman. The movie, a dark war comedy, about army surgeons at a mobile field hospital during the Korean War. The film went on to inspire a critically acclaimed TV show of the same name.
In 1971, Sutherland appeared in the detective film Klute where he played Detective John Klute, who must protect a witness to a murder, a prostitute played by Jane Fonda. Donald and Fonda both won NAACP Image awards for their role in the film. Fonda also won an Oscar and a Golden Globe for her role. He and Fonda lived together for two years after the film.
Donald came to the attention of many new fans when he made his first western in 1974, Alien Thunder, or as it was called under the American title Dan Candy’s Law. The movie’s plot told the story of a Woods Cree Indian who killed a Northeast Mounted Police Sergeant and was hunted for two years by the man’s partner. His next appearance in a western wasn’t until 1994 in the TV movie, The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. The movie was about an elderly woman who relived the horror of the Civil War through her memories of her husband Captain Willie Marsden, who she married when she was fourteen.
In the 1990s, Sutherland starred in a trio of movies that garnered him accolades and awards. In Citizen X, a TV movie he made in 1995, he played Mikhail Fetisov, the man who was instrumental in the conviction of Andrei Chikatilo, a notorious serial killer in Russia. Donald won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his role. In the 1999 TV movie The Hunley, he played General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard, the Confederate leader who played a role in creating the H L Hunley, the first submersible to sink an enemy warship. Donald won a Satellite Award in 1999 for the movie Without Limits, a biographical sports film.
Sutherland returned to the western genre in the 2003 film Cold Mountain. The movie was set in the final days of the Civil War when a wounded soldier embarked on a desperate journey to Cold Mountain to reunite with his sweetheart. Donald played the father of Nicole Kidman’s character Ada Monroe, Reverend Monroe. Two more western films followed, with Dawn Rider in 2012 and Forsaken in 2015. Forsaken also starred his son, Kiefer.
Two more major awards were in store for Sutherland. In 2018, he received an honorary Oscar for his career achievements. He then went on to receive a Critics Choice award in 2021 for the TV limited series The Undoing.
Sutherland returned to television in 2023 for his final western role as Judge Parker in the program Lawman: Bass Reeves. This series recalled the events that led Bass Reeves to become one of the first United States Deputy Marshals west of the Mississippi and followed him on his early assignments. Donald appeared in eight episodes.
Donald Sutherland died in Miami on June 20, 2024, at the age of 88 from chronic pulmonary disease. Whether he played a flawed hero or a despicable villain he made a truly lasting impression in the fantasy world of Hollywood.
BARBARA RUSH
Barbara Rush was born in Denver, Colorado on January 4, 1927, to parents Roy and Marguerite Rush. The family later moved to California, and she grew up in Santa Barbara. After high school, Rush attended the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received her first acting role in the university’s theatre program before graduating in 1948.
Rush made her western cinema debut in the 1952 western film Flaming Feather. She appeared as Nora Logan in the story of two men, a rancher and a cavalry officer, who raced to capture a famous renegade outlaw known as the Sidewinder.
Her next western was in 1954. She shared the screen with Rock Hudson in Taza, son of Cochise. Barbara played Oona, an Indian woman torn between two men. When Apache Chief Cochise died, the Chiricahua Apaches were torn between following Taza, Cochise’s son or the warlike renegade, Geronimo. One more film followed in the 50s, when Rush played Princess Lucia in the 1955 film Kiss of Fire. In 1700, a Spanish princess traveled from New Mexico to California with outlaw El Tigre as her guide.
Barbara transitioned to television appearing in the show Frontier Circus 1961. It told the story of a one ring circus that traveled through the American west. Barbara appeared as Bonnie Stevens in the episode “The Smallest Target.” The land leased by the circus for a weeklong stay was owned by the star performer’s estranged husband.
In 1966, Rush appeared as Sister Williams in the TV show Laredo. A group of Texas Rangers working along the Mexican border got in and out of trouble while serving under the command of Captain Parmalee. The series ran for two seasons. Barbara appeared in the episode “Miracle at Massacre Mission.”
More western roles followed when Rush appeared as Audra Favor in her best western role in the 1967 release Hombre. The movie starred Paul Newman as John Russell, a white man raised by the Apache. John Russell became the only hope for the survival of the passengers after the stagecoach they were traveling on was robbed and they were forced to walk across the desert to safety.
Custer was another of the single season westerns that Barabara had a role in. It debuted in 1967 on the ABC network. The show was extremely far from historically accurate. In 1868, George Custer took charge of a mixed bag of ex-confederates and criminals at Fort Hays, Kansas. Barbara played Brigid O’Rourke in the episode “The Gauntlet.” Custer must deal with a British colonel who arrived at Fort Hays and was set to make a reputation.
In 1972, she appeared as Louise Blanchard in the TV series McCloud. The show was a modern take on westerns, patterned after the Clint Eastwood film Coogan’s Bluff. Dennis Weaver played McCloud, a Deputy Marshal from Taos, New Mexico, who was loaned to the police officers assigned to Manhattan’s 27th Precinct. She shared the screen with Milton Berle in the episode “Give my Regards to Broadway.” When a police officer was killed in a grenade ambush, McCloud discovered he was extorting a theatrical producer to advance his daughter’s career. Diana Muldaur also appeared in the episode.
Cade’s County was another of the modern westerns loosely based on Coogan’s Bluff. It ran for one season in 1972 and starred Glenn Ford as Sam Cade, the sheriff of rural Madrid County. Barbara played the role of Jessie Braddock. She appeared in one episode as an old flame of Sam Cade and the main suspect in the murder of her husband.
She also appeared as Betty Spence in the 1975 TV movie The Last Day. The movie put a different slant on the story of the Dalton gang’s attempt to rob two banks in Coffeeville, Kansas. In this version, a retired gunman living near Coffeeville takes up his guns again when he discovered the Daltons planned to rob both the banks.
Her final appearance in a western was in the TV show Paradise in 1991. Barbara appeared as Patricia Forrester in the episode “Bad Blood.”
Barbara Rush was a successful film, TV, and stage actress who was the embodiment of style and grace. She died on March 31, 2024, from dementia at a care home in Westlake Village, California at the age of 97.
SHELLY DUVALL
Shelly Alexis Duvall was born in Fort Worth, Texas on July 7, 1949 to parents Bobbie Ruth, a real estate broker, and Robert Richardson Duvall, an attorney. She was an artistic and energetic child, given the nickname Manic Mouse by her mother. Shelly attended Waltrip High School.
Duvall’s first movie role came in 1970, when she appeared in Brewster McCloud. The following year she appeared in her first western in 1971 in the movie McCabe and Mrs. Miller. The movie is based on the novel McCabe by Edmund Naughton. A gambler and a prostitute became business partners in a remote old west mining town. When a large vein of gold was discovered the big business interests moved in to control the town. Shelly played one of the ladies of the evening, Ida Coyle. Another western followed when she played Mrs. Cleveland In the 1976 film Buffalo Bill and the Indians or Sitting Bulls History Lesson. A cynical Buffalo Bill hired Sitting Bull to exploit his image and add credibility to the distorted view of history that was being presented to the public.
Shelly produced several western themed shows with her Showtime series Tall Tales & Legends, which ran from 1985 to 1987 and produced nine episodes. The second episode starred Jamie Lee Curtis as Annie Oakley, with Brian Dennehy as Buffalo Bill. It told the story of the life of the world-famous female sharpshooter.
The third story was Pecos Bill, which starred Steve Guttenberg as the title character. It also featured Rebecca DeMornay, Martin Mull, and Claude Akins. A man raised by wolves turned a frontier settlement upside down.
Shelly herself starred in the fifth episode, “My Darlin Clementine.” It also starred Ed Asner and David Dukes. During the California gold rush, Clementine fell in love with Leve, but her father preferred a mountain man.
Barabara grew uneasy in Hollywood and moved to Blanco, Texas, in the early 2000’s. She appeared on the Doctor Phil Show in 2016. McGraw showcased her mental health issues, and many people thought he was exploiting her for higher ratings.
A foot injury left Duvall with limited mobility, and she made her last movie in 2023, The Forest Hills. She died in Blanco, Texas on July 11th, 2024, due to complications from diabetes.
Terry Alexander and his wife, Phyllis, live on a small farm near Porum, Oklahoma. They have three children, thirteen grandchildren, and four great grandchildren. If you see him at a conference, though, don’t let him convince you to take part in one of his trivia games—he’ll stump you every time.
