The Adventures of a Wagon Train
Robert Fuller is still foolin’ ‘em.
By: Henry Cabot Beck 03/01/2009
Robert Fuller was the perfect TV cowboy. He loved to ride, loved acting, he had the looks and, as the child of professional dancers, he had the grace to make it all look good.
More important, being in Westerns was all Fuller wanted to do, once he had made the choice to become an actor in the early 1950’s. He couldn’t have picked a better time, because Westerns were definitely the flavor of the day.
When Fuller was offered one of the leads in a brand-new series called Laramie (1959), he went for it, full throttle, and never looked back. Four years later, when Laramie came to an end, Fuller was immediately pulled aboard the long-running series Wagon Train, filling the void caused by Robert Horton’s departure.
Fuller traded his chaps for a surgical gown when he went to work in what would be his final TV series, Emergency! Producer Jack Webb went to some considerable effort to convince Fuller that he didn’t have to be on a horse to have a good time. Webb was on the money, and Emergency! lasted seven years, from 1972-79, which meant that Fuller had a solid 20 years of regular TV work.
Fuller continued to work on TV and in movies; he even played the descendent of his Laramie character, Jess Harper, in several episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger.
A few years ago, Fuller decided that Los Angeles had lost its charm, and that his time would be better spent fishing and riding horses. He bought a place just north of Dallas, Texas, where he lives with his wife, the actress Jennifer Savidge.
He does occasionally step away from his bass boat long enough to greet fans at Western festivals around the country. Last year, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, alongside one of his boyhood idols, Johnny Mack Brown.
TW: What convinced you to say goodbye to Los Angeles?
RF: I really like to fish. And I honestly got tired of Hollywood. I’ve done everything I could possibly do there, and I wanted to enjoy myself for a while. So Jennifer and I started looking for some places. In the meantime, my good pal Alex Cord, well, he wanted to get out of Hollywood too, and he bought a ranch in a little place called Valley View, which is about eight miles from here. We came down to visit him a couple of times, and we fell in love with this area, so we started looking for property. Dadgummit, we found a gorgeous piece of property out in the country with two bass ponds on it, which knocked me out to start with. I’ve always wanted a bass boat, so I finally got my bass boat, and I got these lakes and I just fish. We got some horses and miniature donkeys and dogs and cats and....
Sounds like you’re living in Michael Jackson’s house!
[Laughs] Yeah! Not quite.
Comments (2)
Robert Fuller has always been one of my favorite actors and I just watched Mustang Valley a few days ago and it was great. I look forward to seeing the Wagon Train series, when growing up as a boy in South Dakota we only got one channel on the tv and Wagon Train was on a channel we did not get. Thanks for the great magazine and keep up the good work. Doc
Thank you for a wonderful article about a truly wonderful guy. The Robert Fuller Fandom gets together every year at the Festival of the West in Phoenix, Arizona, and Bob Fuller very generously shares his time with us. He is a true cowboy in the very best sense of the word.
Yvonne Freydberg
Post A Comment