Robert Fuller (born Leonard Leroy Lee; July 29, 1933) is a retired American actor. Fuller was known for his deep “charcoal” voice and was known from his roles on the popular Western series Laramie as Jess Harper and Wagon Train as Cooper Smith. He was also known for his starring role as Dr. Kelly Brackett in the 1970s medical/action drama Emergency! (1972-1977).
Robert Fuller was born Leonard Leroy Lee on July 29, 1933, in Troy, New York,[1] the only child of Elizabeth Lee, a dance instructor. Later in his childhood, Betty married Robert Simpson Sr., a Naval Academy officer. In 1939, at the age of 6, his family and he moved to Key West, Florida, where, already known by the nickname of "Buddy", he took the name Robert Simpson Jr. The early highlights of his life were acting and dancing. His parents owned a dancing school in Florida. His family also moved to Chicago, where they lived for a year, before moving back to Florida.[1]
Simpson, Jr., as he was then still formally known, attended the Miami Military School for fifth and sixth grades, and Key West High School for ninth grade. He dropped out in 1948, at the age of 14, because he disliked school and was doing poorly there. In 1950, at the age of 16, he traveled with his family to Hollywood, California, where his first job was as a stunt man. He also worked at Grauman's Chinese Theatre, beginning as a doorman and working his way up to assistant manager by age 18. At the urging of friends, Simpson, Jr., joined the Screen Actors Guild, embarked on a career in acting, and changed his name to Robert Fuller, the name by which he was known at his most prominent.[2]
Although he had been considering giving up acting, Fuller, at the suggestion of his best friend, Chuck Courtney, attended Richard Boone's acting classes. Boone suggested that Fuller study under the tutelage of Sanford Meisner at New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse.[4]
In the 1956 episode "The Comeback" in the religion anthology series, Crossroads, Fuller played the part of a former soldier. In 1957, Fuller was cast in his first major film role in Teenage Thunder. He said of it:
I always wanted to be in show business and with the help of my best buddy, Chuck Courtney, who was an actor then, he helped get me my first starring role in a movie called Teenage Thunder. It was a break for me, and since Chuck had the pull at the time to get the director, Paul Helmick, use me for the bad guy and not another actor that he really wanted. It was the gateway to many other roles, which led to the Laramie series and so on and so forth.[5]
He played Alex in a 1958 episode of Death Valley Days, the Gunsmith in support of guest star Anthony Caruso and returned to the show in 1959 to play clever Mexican-American cattle rustler Johnny Santos in the episode, "Ten in Texas".
On February 24, 1959, Fuller guest-starred in the episode "Blind is the Killer," in NBC's Cimarron City television series. This appearance propelled him into a lead role seven months later in Laramie, one of the comparatively few network programs set in Wyoming. Fuller appeared as Joe Cole, a young gunfighter seeking a reputation, who found his target in Cimarron City Mayor Matt Rockford, played by George Montgomery.
In the summer of 1959, Fuller guest starred as young outlaw, Buck Harmon, in the episode "The Friend" on the ABC/Warner Bros. Western series, Lawman. In the story line, Harmon is estranged from his minister father, played by Robert F. Simon. When the outlaw gang comes into Laramie, Buck switches sides to help his old friend, Deputy Johnny McKay (Peter Brown). In the shootout, Harmon is gunned down, but his father is spared. That same year, Fuller also appeared as Davey Carey in another Lawman episode, "The Souvenir".
Fuller was David Dortort's second choice for the role of Lorne Greene's youngest cocky, impish son, Joseph "Little Joe" Cartwright, on NBC's Bonanza, but he lost the role to another young and then-unknown actor, Michael Landon, whose career was made by that role.[6] About the same time, Fuller landed the co-starring role of Jess Harper on Laramie, which ran from 1959 to 1963, and Fuller was cast opposite another of his best friends, John Smith. Still unknown, Fuller was asked to do a screen test for the character of Slim Sherman, and Smith had originally been cast as Jess Harper. Fuller insisted he would be better cast as Harper, and after the screen test, he won the role of Jess, while Smith got the part of Slim.[7]
Laramie eventually aired in more than 70 countries. When it ended its run, Fuller jumped to another Western, Wagon Train alongside John McIntire (a veteran film actor, a two-time guest-star on Laramie,),Frank McGrath and Terry Wilson. According to an August 17, 2009, interview for On Screen and Beyond, Fuller noted that he was not brought into the show to replace Robert Horton (an actor Fuller met in 1954 and befriended for 62 years until Horton's death in March 2016) in the role of the wagon train scout. He resembled Horton and the two shared the same birthday, but Horton was nine years Fuller's senior.[8] Horton had already departed from the cast a year prior to Fuller’s stepping in to complete the series’s final two seasons.
After producer Jack Webb saw Fuller in the 1971 movie The Hard Ride, he insisted Fuller star in his new NBC medical drama, Emergency!, that already starred singer and actress, Julie London, a best friend of Fuller's, in the role of Dixie McCall, Chief Nurse of The Emergency Room. Fuller was reluctant to play a doctor, especially in a series with a contemporary urban setting. The persistent Webb convinced him to accept the role of Dr. Kelly Brackett, Chief of Emergency Medicine, at the fictitious Rampart General Hospital. In the aforementioned 2009 interview with On Screen and Beyond, Fuller said that he had twice, politely, rejected the role of Brackett. Webb then reminded Fuller, much less politely, that Western shows had been repeatedly cancelled over the previous five years and that the genre was on the decline.[8]
Fuller's on-screen appearances on the last season of Emergency! had been reduced, because not only did the show go into a completely different direction, he also wanted to look for more work in Westerns while going fishing with his friends; therefore, Julie London became the show's central character, along with Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe, whose characters also became the primary focus of the show.
In the 1980s and the 1990s
In 1980, Fuller starred in the pilot of a CBS Western series, Jake's Way, as the title character. But the series failed to sell.[9]
His final film appearances included portraying Dr. Hackett, based on his Emergency! character, in the parody film Repossessed (1990) and a cameo as a poker player along with many other old western stars in Maverick (1994).
Fuller dabbled in singing. He did several "bandstand" gigs with Bill Aken's Los Nomadas rock group at holiday festivities in Whiskey Flats, California. While acting as grand marshal for the local Memorial Day parade, he performed the 1950s song "Caribbean", singing the same verse over and over. He later told the band that he only knew the first verse of the song.
In 1967, he recorded an LP in Munich, Germany. Most of the songs were recorded in German, including "Ein einsamer Cowboy" ("Lonesome Cowboy"), "Adios Mexicana" ("Goodbye Mexican Girl"), "Überall auf der Welt" ("All Over the World"), and "Sind wie Blumen" ("Girls Are Like Flowers").
Fuller and Patricia Lee Lyon married on December 20, 1962, and had three children. The two divorced in 1984; Lyon died of cancer in 1994.[10]
By the 1990s, Fuller had largely retired from the film business. His last acting credit was in 2001. Since May 19, 2001, he has been married to actress Jennifer Savidge, known for her role on NBC's St. Elsewhere series.[11]
Fuller reunited with the rest of the surviving Emergency! cast at the Emergency! Convention '98, at the Burbank Airport Hilton, October 9-11, 1998. All of the main actors attended except for Julie London, who had suffered a stroke in 1995, and was later diagnosed with lung cancer. London's husband Bobby Troup passed away just four months after the reunion. Fuller and the rest of the cast and crew answered fans' questions and reminisced about their time together, during which the castmates said they got along well.[12]
On March 10, 2010, Fuller presented James Drury with the "Cowboy Spirit Award" at the Festival of the West.[13] He also paid tribute to late co-star John Smith. During the tribute, he recounted many details about Smith's life, especially their on- and off-screen chemistry during their days on Laramie. Smith had also attended the Festival of the West for two seasons before his declining health rendered his appearance impossible.[14]
In the mid-2004, Fuller and wife Jennifer Savidge moved from Los Angeles to north Texas to raise horses on a ranch. His neighbor and long-term friend Alex Cord had urged Fuller to move to Cooke County. The two met in 1961 on the set of Laramie when Cord made his television acting debut.[15]
Fuller's stepfather, Robert Simpson Sr., died in 2009.[16]
On October 9, 2010, Fuller, Drury, and Don Reynolds participated in the Wild West Toy Show, sponsored by Bob Terry in Azle, Texas near Fort Worth. The event promotes horse riding and the purchase and exchange of Western merchandise.
In September 2012, Fuller, along with several other Western celebrities, attended the first-ever Spirit of the Cowboy Western Festival held at Chestnut Square in McKinney, Texas. The event is billed as the biggest and best Western festival in North Texas.
On July 29, 2013, Fuller celebrated his 80th birthday with his fans and his wife while vacationing on a ranch in Libby, Montana.[17]
On November 9, 2014, Fuller and fellow actor/fishing buddy, James Best, whom he met on the sixth episode of Laramie, attended the 100th birthday celebration of their lifelong friend and fellow actor Norman Lloyd, in Los Angeles, California. Best passed away a few months later.
In 1961, Fuller won the Best Actor Award in Japan and the Japanese Golden Order of Merit, presented by the Empress of Japan. Fuller was the first American ever to earn this award.[4]
In 1970, he won five Ottos, which are the German equivalent of the Emmy Awards. That same year, he won the Buffalo Bill award for Outstanding Western Entertainment.[18]
On April 16, 1974, Fuller won the Outstanding Service Award from the Huntsville (Alabama) Fire Department.[18]
For his contribution to the television industry, Robert Fuller has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6608 Hollywood Blvd.[19]
On March 18, 2006, a bronze sculpture of Jess Harper on Traveller was awarded to him by the Robert Fuller Fandom and the National Festival of the West.[18]
On October 12, 2007, he won the Silver Spur Award along with Stuart Whitman, Peter Brown, and Dean Smith, who received a lifetime achievement award.[21]
^"The Golden Boot Awards". Golden Boot Awards. Motion Picture and Television Fund. Archived from the original on February 4, 2019. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
