Jerome Courtland

Jerome Courtland, born Courtland Jourolmon Jr. on December 27, 1926, in Knoxville, Tennessee, was an American actor, director, and producer whose career spanned film, television, and Broadway. He died on March 1, 2012, of heart disease in Santa Clarita, California.

Courtland's path to Hollywood began at age seventeen when he attended a party with his mother, a professional singer, and encountered director Charles Vidor. That meeting led to a screen test at Columbia Pictures and a seven-year contract. His feature debut came in Vidor's 1944 screwball comedy Together Again. He then entered the U.S. Army and served in the Pacific Theater of World War II. Following his discharge, he appeared opposite Shirley Temple in Kiss and Tell and went on to accumulate more than a dozen film credits, among them The Man From Colorado (1948), Battleground (1949), The Palomino (1950), The Barefoot Mailman (1951), and Take the High Ground (1953). A licensed pilot, Courtland also trained in stunt flying.

In 1951, Courtland took on the romantic lead in the Broadway musical Flahooley, appearing alongside Barbara Cook. The production was short-lived, but it marked his sole Broadway credit. Back in California, he became a familiar face in television Westerns, with guest appearances on The Rifleman, Death Valley Days, and The Virginian. In 1957, he starred in six episodes of ABC's Disneyland in the miniseries The Saga of Andy Burnett, a Walt Disney project intended to replicate the success of the Davy Crockett miniseries. Courtland also sang the title song heard during the credits of the 1957 film Old Yeller and played Army Lt. Henry Nowlan in the 1959 Disney film Tonka. That same year he narrated the Disney short Noah's Ark, which received an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject (Cartoon). From 1959 to 1960, he starred as the lead character Leif in the television series Tales of the Vikings, a 39-episode production filmed in Germany and backed by Kirk Douglas's production company Brynaprod, for which Courtland dyed his hair and beard blonde. In 1965, he appeared as newspaperman William Byers in the Death Valley Days episode "The Race at Cherry Creek," a syndicated anthology series hosted at the time by Ronald Reagan.

During the 1960s, Courtland transitioned away from acting to pursue producing work for Disney, Screen Gems, and other studios. Among his producing credits were the 1975 Walt Disney film Ride a Wild Pony, the 1975 Disney film Escape to Witch Mountain, the partly animated 1977 Disney feature Pete's Dragon, and The Devil and Max Devlin. He made his directorial debut in 1968 with episodes of The Flying Nun and later directed episodes of Dynasty, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, and The Colbys for producer Aaron Spelling. In the early 1990s he made guest appearances on L.A. Law and Knots Landing. In 1997, Courtland relocated to the Chicago area, where he spent five years teaching acting and directing for the camera at Columbia College.