The Life and Legend of Hugh O’Brian
An outrageous interview with the actor who is almost as legendary as the man he portrayed.
By: Henry Cabot Beck 06/01/2009
Hugh O’Brian is Wyatt Earp. By that I mean that in talking with O’Brian, one gets the sense that the actor is in many ways as contradictory as the legendary lawman Earp has become over time.
The irony is that because O’Brian’s Earp is “brave, courageous and bold,” as the theme song endlessly reiterated, historians are up against this stiff-backed, morally righteous version of Earp whenever they try to humanize the real-life Earp, or in a few cases, demonize him.
One also gets the sense that O’Brian has kept Earp on hallowed ground, and he has possibly made some effort to represent Earp’s reputation in the way he’s maintained his own life.
Certainly O’Brian’s charity work is well-known and widely respected. The organization he started in 1958, HOBY (Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership), continues to do good work training future leaders across the globe.
The real man who O’Brian portrayed from 1955-61 in the ABC series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp was many things to many people, and not all of them particularly laudatory. Wyatt Earp, who died in Los Angeles in 1929, was probably a good deal more interesting in real life than as he was portrayed by Henry Fonda, Burt Lancaster, Randolph Scott and other stars throughout the decades.
The same can be said of O’Brian.
Most biographies of O’Brian usually start here: Born Hugh Charles Krampe in 1925, O’Brian was raised in a marine family and became the youngest drill instructor in marine history, in 1943, at 17.
He likes to tell the story of how he got into the ring, on base, with a huge fighter, and how he barely managed to win the fight, which just happened to have been refereed by the visiting actor John Wayne. That story ties in neatly with the fact that O’Brian was the last person killed in a gunfight with Wayne on camera, in Wayne’s final movie, The Shootist.
While still in the service, O’Brian won a contest on a radio show by going off-book and improvising a line, which landed him a date with the stunning movie star Virginia Mayo and a wild night on the town at the famed Coconut Grove, where Tommy Dorsey & His Orchestra was performing. That he remembers anything at all is remarkable, because he was introduced to a virtual chorus line of Brandy Alexanders by actress Arlene Francis.
The next day O’Brian was invited to visit a set, where he was introduced to a real chorus line of tasty starlets, the Goldwyn Girls, who were appearing in the 1945 feature film, Wonder Man, starring Mayo and Danny Kaye.
Says O’Brian, “Ever hear about them? Each one was more beautiful than the other, each one of them built like a brick s---house. As I used to say, they were all test pilots for Borden Milk. In other words they had big—”
“I got it,” I told him.
O’Brian takes nearly as much pride describing how he stumbled into a career as a movie and TV actor as he does his marine years, but it’s good stuff, and it involves his moving in and working with a house full of these hot Hollywood hopefuls, which, he will tell you, tested his athleticism to a dangerous degree.
Comments (3)
Hey: Great interview. Brings back memories of the days I watched it on the t.v I was always trying to make my own version of the Buntline out of wood scrapes
Great to see such an icon interviewed. When is the Earp series going to be properly released so we can see it again?
Hey good interview & honest responses
by Hough. Enjoyed it immensely!
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