Alan Hale Jr. starred in the beloved CBS sitcom Gilligan's Island, but it wasn't his first appearance on one of the network's most famous shows. Two years before Gilligan's Island debuted in 1964, Hale Jr. appeared in an episode of the equally legendary Western Rawhide, which starred a young Clint Eastwood.
The series "Rawhide" launched Eastwood's career after he spent most of the 1950s in bit parts. More precisely, Eastwood's career began when he drove director Jack Arnold to a nervous breakdown on set. But that was when he was just starting out as a Universal contract actor. In 1962, the actor became a famous television star and, just two years later, would help Sergio Leone rewrite the rules of filmmaking with "A Fistful of Dollars." It was then that he and Alan Hale Jr. worked together for the first time—but not the last.
Like Eastwood, the future actor who played Skipper had appeared in small, albeit more significant, roles in the 1950s. For example, by the time he guest-starred on Rawhide, Hale Jr. was already starring in his own short-lived sitcom, Biff Baker, U.S.A., and co-starring with Western legends the 33-year-old Eastwood could only dream of working with. However, true fame eluded Hale Jr. when he first appeared on the set of Rawhide.
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Alan Hale Jr. played the two-faced wagon master in Rawhide.
A close-up photo of J.T. Lucas, played by Alan Hale Jr., in the CBS series "Rawhide.".
It's hard to find a Western series in which Alan Hale Jr. didn't guest star in the 1950s and '60s. Cheyenne is a long-forgotten masterpiece that completely transformed television, and Hale Jr. appeared in two episodes in 1957 and 1960. The Texan, Bonanza, and Gunsmoke also welcomed the future star of Gilligan's Island, so when Rawhide debuted in 1962, Hale Jr. was already well-versed in the Wild West.
The 16th episode of the fourth season of Rawhide, "The Woman Trap," aired on January 26, 1962. In it, Gil Favor (Eric Fleming) and Rowdy Yates (Eastwood) encounter a group of women heading to Fort Worth. The wagons carrying mail-order brides are being transported by a mysterious man named Harlech (Robert Gist), who tells the women they are traveling to meet their future husbands. But he soon changes his mind and reveals that they are actually being taken to a small town in West Texas to be married by a group of cattle rustlers. When Favor and his men discover one of the brides left for dead along the way, he, Rowdy Yates, and Hay Soos (Robert Cabal) return to try to help the women, but soon find themselves hostage themselves.
In this episode, Hale Jr. played wagon master J.T. Lucas, who leads a caravan transporting women to their destination. He and Favor initially get along, but their friendship quickly crumbles when Fleming's wagon master learns of Lucas and Harlech's plans. All of this means Hale has a fair amount of dialogue and appears in a significant portion of the episode—something that can't be said for many of his supporting roles in the 1950s and '60s.
Alan Hale Jr. collaborated with Clint Eastwood six years after their collaboration on Rawhide.
J.T. Lucas (Alan Hale Jr.) talks to Gil Favor (Eric Fleming) in "Rawhide" - CBS.
Besides Alan Hale Jr., The Woman Trap also starred Marion Ross as Flora, a bride abandoned to die in the desert. Ten years later, she played Richie Cunningham's mother on Happy Days. Hale Jr., on the other hand, was destined for sitcom success much earlier after his cameo appearance on Rawhide.
A year and a half later, Hale Jr. found himself filming the pilot episode of Gilligan's Island, which never aired. Filming took place in November 1963, around the time of the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. (hence the flag flying at half-mast in the opening credits of Gilligan's Island's first season). By that time, Hale Jr. had already appeared in several other episodes of series such as Wagon Train, Maverick, and Perry Mason. However, when Gilligan's Island was greenlit, and Hale played Captain Jonas Grumby, he finally found the fame that had eluded him for so long.
After Gilligan's Island, Hale Jr. starred in one of Clint Eastwood's most important Westerns, playing Matt Stone in Hang Them High. Symbolically, this film became Eastwood's first serious test as a movie star in the United States. After starring in Sergio Leone's trilogy, the young actor had to prove his popularity in the United States, and he did so with Hang Them High. Hale Jr., who had watched Eastwood develop his craft in Rawhide, could now also claim to have witnessed the man become a legend.
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Read the original article on SlashFilm.