Randy Boone, who played the guitar-strumming singing ranch hand Randy Benton on the classic NBC western The Virginian, died Thursday, August 28. He was 83.
His death was reported to The Hollywood Reporter by his wife Lana. Additional details were not disclosed.
Born Clyde Wilson Randall Boone Jr. on January 17, 1942, in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Boone later attended North Carolina State College in Raleigh before dropping out and hitchhiking to California to try his hand as an actor. His first gig was a 19-episode run on 1962’s comedy-drama It’s A Man’s World about three young men living in a houseboat on the Ohio River. A costar was future That Girl actor Ted Bessell.
With Man’s World canceled after just four months, Boone was a guest star in such series as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Wagon Train, The Fugitive and The Twilight Zone (in the memorable 1963 episode “The 7th Is Made Up of Phantoms,” he played a National Guardsman sent back in time to the Battle of the Little Bighorn), all before landing his 70-episode 1964-66 stint on The Virginian.
The Virginian starred Doug McClure and James Drury, who died in 1995 and 2020, respectively.
Boone later said that he was fired by producer Frank Price. “I was told that [Price] thought I was window dressing and wasn’t needed on the show, but I feel that I was needed as much as anybody.”
Price died just last week, three days before Boone.
Following his two-season stint on the long-running The Virginian, Boone starred from 1967-68 on the CBS Western series Cimarron Strip alongside Stuart Whitman, Percy Herbert and Jill Townsend. He made episodic guest appearances well into the 1980s on such shows as Lassie, Emergency!, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, Gunsmoke, Kung Fu, and Highway To Heaven, among others.
On the film side, Boone starred in the 1966’s Country Boy, about a rising young country musician.
Boone left acting in the late 1980s and, according to THR, worked in construction until his retirement. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
