Guy Madison, a film and television actor who starred in the 1950s television series "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok," died Tuesday at Desert Hospital Hospice in Palm
Springs, Calif. He was 74 and lived in Morongo Valley, Calif.The cause was emphysema, the Associated Press reported.
Madison, whose name was changed from Robert Moseley when he became an actor, was born in Pumpkin Center, Calif., and reared in nearby Bakersfield.
While in Hollywood on a military pass in 1944, he was spotted by a talent scout and whisked to the offices of David O. Selznick at Paramount. Selznick, seeing major heartthrob material in the blond, boyishly handsome sailor, had him written into the film "Since You Went Away," which was in production and, almost as an afterthought, ordered screen tests.
In the film, Madison appeared as a lonely sailor in a three-minute bowling-alley sequence with Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker. To conceal his new career from the military, he changed his name.
An avalanche of fan mail followed, and after being discharged from the service, Madison was cast in starring roles with Dorothy McGuire in "Till the End of Time" (1946) and Shirley Temple in "Honeymoon" (1947).
He won the part of Hickok on "The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok," which ran on television from 1951 to 1958 and on radio from 1951 to 1956. Andy Devine played his trusty sidekick, Jingles.