Paul Fix
Encyclopedia
Paul Fix was an American
film
and television
character actor
, best known for his work in westerns. Fix appeared in more than a hundred movies and dozens of television
shows over a 56-year career spanning from 1925 to 1981. In the 1950s, Fix was best known for portraying Marshal Micah Torrance alongside Chuck Connors
in The Rifleman
.
during World War I
, Fix became an incredibly busy character actor who got his start in local productions around his New York home. By the 1920s he had moved to Hollywood and performed in the first of almost 350 movie and television appearances. In the 1930s, he became friends with John Wayne
, coaching him acting, and eventually appearing as a featured player in about twenty-seven of his films.
Fix worked in early films such as Lucky Star (1929) and Ladies Love Brutes
(1930), and became a regular performer for the film's director, Frank Borzage
, on a further eight occasions. Fix later appeared as Richard Bravo in the 1950s cult classic, The Bad Seed
, and also in George Stevens
' film version of Edna Ferber
's Giant, playing Elizabeth Taylor
's father.
Fix may be best-remembered for his role as Marshal
Micah Torrance on the ABC
western
series The Rifleman
, with Chuck Connors
and Johnny Crawford
. He guest starred on the short-lived detective
series, Meet McGraw
and on John Payne
's western series, The Restless Gun
. He played Dr. Mark Piper, Dr. Leonard McCoy's predecessor in the second pilot episode of Star Trek
, "Where No Man Has Gone Before
". When NBC
picked up Star Trek as a series in 1966, Fix was replaced as the Enterprise medical officer by DeForest Kelley
as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy.
Fix appeared as the presiding judge in To Kill a Mockingbird
(1962). He played the sheriff in The Sons of Katie Elder
. In 1966 he appeared in the film El Dorado. In 1972 he appeared in the film Night of the Lepus
. In 1979, he appeared in Wanda Nevada
. Fix co-wrote the screenplay for the John Wayne
film Tall in the Saddle
.
In 1961, Fix appeared as Ramsey Collins in the series finale, "Around the Dark Corner", of the NBC crime drama Dante
. That same year he played Dr. Abel in the episode "The Haven" on The DuPont Show with June Allyson
. Other television credits included The Adventures of Superman (1953–1954, with Anthony Caruso
and Elisha Cook, Jr.) and Northwest Passage
, an adventure
series.
Fix appeared regularly as District Attorney Hale on Perry Mason
(1957–1963). He guest starred on such television series as The Twilight Zone
(1964), The F.B.I. (1965–1973), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
(1966), The Time Tunnel
(1966), The Wild Wild West
(1966–1967), Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law
(1971), and The Rockford Files
episode "The House On Willis Avenue" (as Joe Tooley). He appeared on the NBC series Kentucky Jones
(1964) as Judge Perkins in the episode "Spare the Rod". He played the role of Pete Maxwell in the 1973 film "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid".
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
character actor
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...
, best known for his work in westerns. Fix appeared in more than a hundred movies and dozens of television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
shows over a 56-year career spanning from 1925 to 1981. In the 1950s, Fix was best known for portraying Marshal Micah Torrance alongside Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. His best known role from his forty-year film career was Lucas McCain in the 1960s ABC hit Western series The Rifleman....
in The Rifleman
The Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
.
Career
A veteran of the United States NavyUnited States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Fix became an incredibly busy character actor who got his start in local productions around his New York home. By the 1920s he had moved to Hollywood and performed in the first of almost 350 movie and television appearances. In the 1930s, he became friends with John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
, coaching him acting, and eventually appearing as a featured player in about twenty-seven of his films.
Fix worked in early films such as Lucky Star (1929) and Ladies Love Brutes
Ladies Love Brutes
Ladies Love Brutes is a 1930 American motion picture starring George Bancroft, Mary Astor, and Fredric March. The film was directed by Rowland V...
(1930), and became a regular performer for the film's director, Frank Borzage
Frank Borzage
Frank Borzage was an American film director and actor.-Biography:Frank Borzage's father, Luigi Borzaga, was born in Ronzone, in 1859. As a stonemason, he sometimes worked in Switzerland; he met his future wife, Maria Ruegg , where she worked in a silk factory...
, on a further eight occasions. Fix later appeared as Richard Bravo in the 1950s cult classic, The Bad Seed
The Bad Seed (film)
The Bad Seed is a 1956 American horror-thrillerfilm directed by Mervyn LeRoy. It is based upon a play by Maxwell Anderson, which in turn is based upon William March's 1954 novel The Bad Seed. The play was adapted by John Lee Mahin for the screenplay of the film...
, and also in George Stevens
George Stevens
George Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter and cinematographer.Among his most notable films were Diary of Anne Frank , nominated for Best Director, Giant , winner of Oscar for Best Director, Shane , Oscar nominated, and A Place in the Sun , winner of Oscar for Best...
' film version of Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
's Giant, playing Elizabeth Taylor
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...
's father.
Fix may be best-remembered for his role as Marshal
Marshal
Marshal , is a word used in several official titles of various branches of society. The word is an ancient loan word from Old French, cf...
Micah Torrance on the ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
series The Rifleman
The Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
, with Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors
Chuck Connors was an American actor, writer, and professional basketball and baseball player. His best known role from his forty-year film career was Lucas McCain in the 1960s ABC hit Western series The Rifleman....
and Johnny Crawford
Johnny Crawford
John Ernest "Johnny" Crawford is a prolific American character actor, singer and musician. At 12, Crawford rose to fame for playing Mark McCain, the son of the Lucas McCain character , in the popular 1960s ABC western series, The Rifleman, which aired from 1958 to 1963...
. He guest starred on the short-lived detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
series, Meet McGraw
Meet McGraw
Meet McGraw is an American dramatic television series starring Frank Lovejoy in the role of the hard-hitting detective McGraw, a man specifically given no first name in the program. Forty-one half-hour episodes aired on NBC during the 1957-1958 season, sponsored by Procter & Gamble. The series was...
and on John Payne
John Payne (actor)
John Payne was an American film actor who is mainly remembered as a singer in 20th Century Fox musical films, and for his leading roles in Miracle on 34th Street and the NBC western television series The Restless Gun.-Background:Payne was born in Roanoke, Virginia...
's western series, The Restless Gun
The Restless Gun
The Restless Gun is a western television series that appeared on NBC between 1957 and 1959, with John Payne in the role of Vint Bonner, a wandering cowboy in the era after the American Civil War. A skilled gunfighter, Bonner is an idealistic person who prefers peaceful resolutions of conflict...
. He played Dr. Mark Piper, Dr. Leonard McCoy's predecessor in the second pilot episode of Star Trek
Star Trek: The Original Series
Star Trek is an American science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry, produced by Desilu Productions . Star Trek was telecast on NBC from September 8, 1966, through June 3, 1969...
, "Where No Man Has Gone Before
Where No Man Has Gone Before
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" is the second pilot episode of the television series Star Trek: The Original Series. It was produced in 1965 after the first pilot, "The Cage", had been rejected by NBC. The episode was eventually broadcast third in sequence on September 22, 1966, and was re-aired on...
". When NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
picked up Star Trek as a series in 1966, Fix was replaced as the Enterprise medical officer by DeForest Kelley
DeForest Kelley
Jackson DeForest Kelley was an American actor known for his iconic roles in Westerns and as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy of the USS Enterprise in the television and film series Star Trek.-Early life:...
as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy.
Fix appeared as the presiding judge in To Kill a Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird (film)
To Kill a Mockingbird is a 1962 American drama film adaptation of Harper Lee's novel of the same name directed by Robert Mulligan. It stars Mary Badham in the role of Scout and Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch....
(1962). He played the sheriff in The Sons of Katie Elder
The Sons of Katie Elder
The Sons of Katie Elder is a 1965 Technicolor western film directed by Henry Hathaway and starring John Wayne and Dean Martin. The movie was filmed principally in Mexico....
. In 1966 he appeared in the film El Dorado. In 1972 he appeared in the film Night of the Lepus
Night of the Lepus
Night of the Lepus, also known as Rabbits, is a 1972 American science fiction horror film based on the 1964 science fiction novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit. Released theatrically on October 4, 1972, it focuses on members of a small Arizona town who battle thousands of mutated, carnivorous killer...
. In 1979, he appeared in Wanda Nevada
Wanda Nevada
Wanda Nevada is a 1979 film starring Peter Fonda and Brooke Shields. It was also directed by Peter Fonda. Henry Fonda makes a cameo appearance, barely recognizable as a grizzled, half-insane goggle-wearing old miner, making this the only film to feature the father and son together.-Main cast:*...
. Fix co-wrote the screenplay for the John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
film Tall in the Saddle
Tall in the Saddle
Tall in the Saddle is a 1944 western movie starring John Wayne as a cowboy and Ella Raines as his fierce bullwhip-brandishing love interest. The screenplay was co-written by actor Paul Fix and the film was directed by Edwin L...
.
In 1961, Fix appeared as Ramsey Collins in the series finale, "Around the Dark Corner", of the NBC crime drama Dante
Dante (TV series)
Dante is a short-lived NBC adventure/drama television series starring Howard Duff as Willie Dante, a former gambler who operates Dante's Inferno, a San Francisco, California, nightclub. Alan Mowbray co-starred as Stewart Styles, the Maitre d'; Tom D'Andrea as Biff, Dante's "man Friday", and Mort...
. That same year he played Dr. Abel in the episode "The Haven" on The DuPont Show with June Allyson
The DuPont Show with June Allyson
The DuPont Show with June Allyson is an American anthology drama series which aired on CBS from September 21, 1959 to April 3, 1961 with rebroadcasts continuing until June 12, 1961...
. Other television credits included The Adventures of Superman (1953–1954, with Anthony Caruso
Anthony Caruso (actor)
Anthony Caruso was an American character actor in over 100 American films, usually playing villains, including the First Season of Walt Disney's Zorro as Don Juan Ortega...
and Elisha Cook, Jr.) and Northwest Passage
Northwest Passage (TV series)
Northwest Passage is a 26-episode half-hour adventure television series produced by Metro Goldwyn Mayer about Major Robert Rogers during the time of the French and Indian War . The show derived its title and the main characters Rogers, Towne, and Marriner from the 1937 novel of the same name by...
, an adventure
Adventure
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...
series.
Fix appeared regularly as District Attorney Hale on Perry Mason
Perry Mason
Perry Mason is a fictional character, a defense attorney who was the main character in works of detective fiction authored by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason was featured in more than 80 novels and short stories, most of which had a plot involving his client's murder trial...
(1957–1963). He guest starred on such television series as The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone is an American television anthology series created by Rod Serling. Each episode is a mixture of self-contained drama, psychological thriller, fantasy, science fiction, suspense, or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist...
(1964), The F.B.I. (1965–1973), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is an American science fiction film, produced and directed by Irwin Allen, released by 20th Century Fox in 1961. The story was written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett. Walter Pidgeon starred as Admiral Harriman Nelson, with Robert Sterling as Captain Lee Crane...
(1966), The Time Tunnel
The Time Tunnel
The Time Tunnel is a 1966–1967 U.S. color science fiction TV series. The show was created and produced by Irwin Allen, his third science fiction television series. The show's main theme was Time Travel Adventure. The Time Tunnel was released by 20th Century Fox and broadcast on ABC. The show ran...
(1966), The Wild Wild West
The Wild Wild West
The Wild Wild West is an American television series that ran on CBS for four seasons from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969....
(1966–1967), Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law
Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law
Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law is an American legal drama, jointly created by David Victor and former law professor Jerry McNeely, that starred actor Arthur Hill. The series was broadcast on ABC from 1971 to 1974...
(1971), and The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files
The Rockford Files is an American television drama series which aired on the NBC network between September 13, 1974 and January 10, 1980. It has remained in regular syndication to the present day. The show stars James Garner as Los Angeles-based private investigator Jim Rockford and features Noah...
episode "The House On Willis Avenue" (as Joe Tooley). He appeared on the NBC series Kentucky Jones
Kentucky Jones
Kentucky Jones is a half-hour comedy/drama starring Dennis Weaver as Kenneth Yarborough "K.Y. or Kentucky" Jones, D.V.M., a recently widowed former horse trainer and active rancher, who becomes the guardian of Dwight Eisenhower "Ike" "Wong, a 10-year-old Chinese orphan, played by Ricky Der...
(1964) as Judge Perkins in the episode "Spare the Rod". He played the role of Pete Maxwell in the 1973 film "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid".
External links
- Paul Fix at Battlestar Wiki, an encyclopedia of the Battlestar Galactica sagas