Milburn Stone

Hugh Milburn Stone was born on July 5, 1904, in Burrton, Kansas, to Herbert Stone and Laura Belfield Stone. At Burrton High School, he participated in the drama club, played basketball, and sang in a barbershop quartet. Despite receiving a congressional appointment to the United States Naval Academy, Stone declined it in favor of pursuing an acting career, joining a stock theater company led by Helen Ross. His uncle, Fred Stone, was an actor with credits in Broadway productions and circus performances. Stone later credited the Burrton town physician, Dr. Joseph Wakefield Myers, who practiced from 1913 to 1928, as the model for his portrayal of a country doctor.

Stone made his stage debut in 1919 in a Kansas tent show. He moved into vaudeville during the late 1920s and by 1930 was performing as half of the Stone and Strain song-and-dance duo. His Broadway career spanned 1934 to 1936 and included two productions: Jayhawker in 1934 and Around the Corner in 1936.

Following his Broadway work, Stone relocated to Los Angeles to pursue film. He appeared in the Tailspin Tommy adventure serial for Monogram Pictures and in 1939 played Stephen Douglas in Young Mr. Lincoln alongside Henry Fonda and Ward Bond. That same year he had an uncredited role in When Tomorrow Comes and in Blackwell's Island. In 1940 he appeared in the comedy espionage film Chasing Trouble with Marjorie Reynolds, Tristram Coffin, and I. Stanford Jolley, and co-starred with Roy Rogers in Colorado, playing Rogers' brother.

Stone played Dr. Blake in the 1943 film Gung Ho! and a warden in Monogram Pictures' Prison Mutiny the same year. Universal Pictures signed him in 1943, and he appeared in Captive Wild Woman, Jungle Woman, and Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, in which he played Captain Pat Vickery. In 1944 he starred as Jim Hudson in the serial The Great Alaskan Mystery and portrayed a Ration Board representative in the public service film Prices Unlimited, produced for the U.S. Office of Price Administration and the Office of War Information. His role as a radio columnist in the musical I'll Remember April led Universal to cast him in a similar part in the 1945 serial The Master Key. That year he also appeared in the Inner Sanctum mystery The Frozen Ghost. In 1953, Stone played Charlton Heston's sidekick in the Western Arrowhead, which also featured Brian Keith and Katy Jurado.

In 1955, CBS adapted its radio Western Gunsmoke for television with a largely recast ensemble. Stone replaced Howard McNear, who had voiced Doc Adams on radio and later appeared as Floyd the Barber on The Andy Griffith Show, bringing what was described as a harder edge to the role of Dr. Galen Adams. Stone remained with Gunsmoke for its entire television run, accumulating 604 episodes through 1975. He frequently shared scenes with Dennis Weaver, who played Chester Goode, and Ken Curtis, who played Festus Haggen. In 1971, Stone required heart bypass surgery at UAB Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama, and missed seven episodes, during which Pat Hingle appeared as Dr. Chapman. In 1968, Stone received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Drama for his work on the series. In 1975, St. Mary of the Plains College in Dodge City, Kansas — the setting of Gunsmoke — awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Stone's brother Joe was a writer who authored scripts for three episodes of Gunsmoke. Stone was also an uncle of character actress Madge Blake. His first marriage, to Ellen Morrison of Delphos, Kansas, lasted twelve years and produced a daughter, Shirley Stone Gleason, born around 1926; Ellen Morrison Stone died in 1937. Stone married Jane Garrison, a native of Hutchinson, Kansas, divorced her, and later remarried her; she died in 2002.

Milburn Stone died of a heart attack on June 12, 1980, in La Jolla, California, and was buried at El Camino Memorial Park in Sorrento Valley, San Diego. He was inducted posthumously into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City in 1981. Stone holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard. The Milburn Stone Theatre in North East, Maryland, was established in his name as a legacy to the performing arts in Cecil County.