Bing Russell
Encyclopedia
Bing Russell was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

 and baseball club owner, and was the father of Golden Globe-nominated actor Kurt Russell
Kurt Russell
Kurt Vogel Russell is an American television and film actor. His first acting roles were as a child in television series, including a lead role in the Western series The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters...

.

Personal life

Russell was born Neil Oliver Russell in Brattleboro, Vermont
Brattleboro, Vermont
Brattleboro, originally Brattleborough, is a town in Windham County, Vermont, United States, located in the southeast corner of the state, along the state line with New Hampshire. The population was 12,046 at the 2010 census...

, the son of Ruth Stewart (née Vogel) and Warren Oliver Russell. Russell always wanted to become an actor; he took drama at Brattleboro Middletown High School. He made his debut in Cavalry Patrol, and had some uncredited roles in his early career. Russell died from complications of cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...

 on April 8, 2003 in Thousand Oaks, California
Thousand Oaks, California
Thousand Oaks is a city in southeastern Ventura County, California, in the United States. It was named after the many oak trees that grace the area, and the city seal is adorned with an oak....

.

Career

Best known as Deputy Clem Foster on Bonanza
Bonanza
Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...

(1959) and Robert in The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven is an American Western film directed by John Sturges, and released in 1960. It is a fictional tale of a group of seven American gunmen who are hired to protect a small agricultural village in Mexico from a group of marauding Mexican bandits...

(1960), he also played Vernon Presley to his son Kurt's Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

 in the 1979 TV movie Elvis. Russell was the owner of the Portland Mavericks
Portland Mavericks
The Portland Mavericks were a minor league baseball team in Portland, Oregon, United States. They began play in the Class A Northwest League in 1973 after the Portland Beavers of the Pacific Coast League moved to Spokane, Washington. The Mavericks were owned by ex-minor league player and television...

 Baseball Club. Helming was the only independent team in the Class A Northwest League. Russell kept a 30-man roster because he believed that some of the players deserved to have one last season. His motto was fun.

Russell created a park that kept all corporate sponsorship outside the gates, hired the first female general manager in professional baseball, and hired the first Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...

 GM/Manager. His team set a record for the highest attendance in Minor league history, and went on to win the pennant that year. Ex-major leaguers and never-weres who could not stop playing the game flocked to his June try-outs, which were always open to anyone that showed up.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK