A Western hero rides off into the sunset: Dale Robertson, 1923-2013

I was sorry to hear today that Dale Robertson, a Western hero of both the big screen and the little one, has died. Robertson, whose credits in Westerns are virtually endless, died Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, at age 89 of complications from lung cancer and pneumonia.

Here's a clip that someone put up on YouTube as a tribute to Robertson. The video I originally linked to, which included some Iverson footage, has since been taken down from YouTube — apologies to any of my readers who tried to watch it and were disappointed to discover that it was gone. This newer one doesn't appear to contain Iverson, but it makes up for it by being a little weird. The location clips here are mainly Vasquez Rocks, but the highlight may be the  "Amazing Grace"/"House of the Rising Sun" mashup in the second half:



A number of the Western productions in Robertson's long career were shot at least in part at the Iverson Movie Ranch, with the ones that come to mind right away being the TV shows "Tales of Wells Fargo" and "Death Valley Days." Robertson's series "Iron Horse" also supposedly shot at Iverson, but I've only found a few episodes so far and the movie ranch has yet to turn up.

One movie I know was shot partially at Iverson that features Robertson is "Fighting Man of the Plains" (1949), a Randolph Scott movie in which Robertson has a small role as the outlaw Jesse James.

The Dale Robertson movie "Sitting Bull" (1954) is often cited as an Iverson production, but I have to refute that claim — I've gone through the movie and didn't find any Iverson. I tend to believe the other citation that turns up for this movie, which is that it's shot around Durango, Mexico.

Similarly, the 1964 Paramount Western "Law of the Lawless," starring Robertson along with Yvonne De Carlo, has been cited as Iverson, but I believe that's another erroneous listing.

Robertson acted from the late 1940s into the 1990s — a career spanning six decades. Even with more than 60 movies under his belt — most of them Westerns — he made his biggest impact on TV, including his early success on "Tales of Wells Fargo." Later in his career he appeared in shows including "Dynasty," "Dallas," "Matt Houston" and "Murder, She Wrote," and he headlined his own series, "J.J. Starbuck," for a short time in the late 1980s.