Dale Robertson Dies in La Jolla; Westerns TV/Movie Icon Was 89

Dale Robertson, an iconic actor in 1950s and 1960s movie and TV Westerns, died Tuesday at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, his niece told news outlets.

He was 89.

Nancy Robertson said her uncle died after a brief illness. Tribute videos have already started appearing on YouTube. (See attached.)

The New York Times, quoting Roberton’s wife, Susan, reported the cause was complications of lung cancer and pneumonia. He had been hospitalized near his home in San Diego. 

According to a Huffington Post report:

Dale Robertson had bit parts in films including The Boy with the Green Hair and the Joan Crawford vehicle Flamingo Road before landing more high-profile roles such as Jesse James in Fighting Man of the Plains.

In the 1950s, he moved into television, starring in series such as Tales of Wells Fargo (1957-62), Iron Horse (1966) and Death Valley Days (1968-70).

Robertson continued to work in TV in the 1970s, and in the 1980s he landed roles in the popular night-time soap operas Dallas and Dynasty.

In 1993, he took what would be his final role, as Zeke in the show Harts of the West, before retiring from acting to spend more time at his ranch in Yukon, Okla., where he lived until moving to the San Diego area in recent months, Nancy Robertson said.

 “I remember him as a larger-than-life fellow,” she was quoted as saying. “When he was in town it was always very exciting. It always meant something magical was going to happen,” such as another actor or performing artist accompanying him on his visits.

The Times also said:

Mr. Robertson refused to call himself an actor. Rather, he said, he was a personality with a distinctive style, not unlike that of the actor he most admired, John Wayne.

“An actor can change himself to fit a part, whereas a personality has to change the part to fit himself,” he said in an interview in 1988. He added, “The personality has to say it his own way.”

Acting or not, he failed to impress some critics, who found his performances understated to the point of woodenness. But others saw him as an embodiment of the stoic frontier virtues that made westerns one of America’s most popular genres for decades.

“Mr. Robertson never lost his disdain for Eastern actors, who he thought just played at being cowboys,” the Times obituary said. “He said you could spot them by the way they walked around a horse. As for himself, he heeded advice given to him by Will Rogers Jr., son of the Oklahoma humorist.”

“Don’t ever take a dramatic lesson,” Rogers reportedly told Robertson. “They will try to put your voice in a dinner jacket, and people like their hominy and grits in everyday clothes.”

Nancy Robertson said her uncle will be cremated and that a memorial service will be held in a few weeks.