’63 split-window Corvette lookin’ like a waggish hepcat. Paul Newman also drove Blocker’s ‘Vette on the track for a few years
He went to the Texas Military Institute, and in 1946 started his undergraduate graduating in 1950 with a degree in English
He fell in love with acting when he was recruited by a girlfriend to play a role in campus production of Arsenic and Old Lace as they needed a strong man to lift the bodies that the spinster aunts had dispatched up from the cellar. (I just posted about the taxis in that movie a week or so ago)
He appeared on Broadway in the 1950-51 production of King Lear. The draft soon ended his apprenticeship, and he served in the Army in the Korean War, making sergeant.
Even after being cast in “Bonanza”, he intended to complete his PhD, but the great success of the series made that impossible, due to the workload of 30+ episodes per year necessitating a 7AM-9PM work schedule five days a week.
Salary, royalties from Bonanza-related merchandise, and business ventures, and an eventual $1-million payout from NBC to buy out the residual rights of each of the three remaining stars made them all rich.
Dan Blocker started the Bonanza Steak House chain in 1963, he died at age 43 in 1972
I honestly thought that was a picture of Jackie Gleason
ReplyDeleteMy first thought too!
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