One of the most reliable and noteworthy character actors of American cinema and television, red-headed, square-jawed, rocky but stern-voiced Kenneth Tobey turned in memorable performances as military men, law enforcement officers and especially cowboys.
Tobey was a veteran of more than 100 films and dozens of TV shows consisting of science fiction, dramas and Westerns from the 1940s to the 1990s. He even starred in his own series Whirlybirds, from 1957 -’59.
Ironically, Tobey graduated form the University of California, Berkeley with a bachelor’s degree in political science before settling in Hollywood’s Wild West and roping in a great herd of roles on both sides of the law, beginning with his screen debut in a Hopalong Cassidy feature.
Tobey was outstanding as a suspicious Ponderosa ranch hand and a stolid deputy sheriff on TV’s Bonanza and The Lone Ranger, respectively. Some of his more memorable roles include corrupt Deputy Mike — nemesis to Tom Laughlin — in the cult classic Billy Jack, and undercover Pinkerton man and sidekick to Randolph Scott in the excellent B-Western Rage at Dawn, the fever-ridden Jim Bowie doomed a the Alamo in Disney’s mega-hit Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier, and John Wayne’s cake-in-the-face exchanging antagonist in John Ford’s underrated The Wings of Eagles.