Robert Horton

Mead Howard Horton Jr., known professionally as Robert Horton, was born on July 29, 1924, in Los Angeles, California, to Mead Howard Horton Sr. and Chelta McMurrin. He was one of two sons raised in a Latter-day Saint household. During childhood, Horton underwent multiple surgeries, including hernia repair and treatment for an enlarged kidney. He attended the California Military Institute in Perris, where he played football, and graduated in 1943 at age 19. He subsequently enlisted in the Coast Guard but received a medical discharge due to his kidney condition.

A chance meeting with a talent scout in 1945 resulted in an uncredited part in Lewis Milestone's film A Walk in the Sun. Horton initially studied dramatics at the University of Miami before transferring and graduating cum laude from UCLA. His early stage work included a tenure with the American Theatre Wing in New York City, where he served as the resident leading man. He held a test option with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and auditioned for The Naked Spur in February 1952, after which MGM signed him to a long-term contract. The studio loaned him to 20th Century Fox the following day to appear in Pony Soldier. His first major television role came on December 16, 1954, in the Ford Theatre episode "Portrait of Lydia."

Horton's Broadway career spanned 1943 to 1963 and included appearances in the farce Slightly Married. His most prominent stage credit came in 1963, when producer David Merrick cast him as the male lead in 110 in the Shade, the musical adaptation of N. Richard Nash's play The Rainmaker, with a score by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt. The production ran for 330 performances on Broadway.

Television brought Horton his widest recognition. He became best known for portraying frontier scout Flint McCullough in the series Wagon Train from 1957 to 1962, alongside Ward Bond, John McIntire, Terry Wilson, and Frank McGrath. He ultimately left the series to pursue musical theater, and his role was subsequently taken by Robert Fuller. Horton also played Drake McHugh in the television adaptation of Kings Row in 1955, a role originated on film by Ronald Reagan, in a production that featured Jack Kelly and ran for seven episodes as part of the Warner Bros. Presents series. From 1965 to 1966, he starred in A Man Called Shenandoah, playing an amnesiac, and from 1983 to 1984 he appeared in the daytime drama As the World Turns as Whit McColl.

Among his many individual television appearances, Horton was featured in seven episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, including "The Disappearing Trick," directed by Arthur Hiller, in which he played a tennis-playing insurance investigator and blackmailer opposite Betsy von Furstenberg. He appeared as Danny Barnes in The DuPont Show with June Allyson episode "No Place to Hide," and as Corporal Tom Vaughn in the Crossroads episode "False Prophet" in 1956. Additional credits included Meet Mr. McNutley, Sheriff of Cochise, The Barbara Stanwyck Show, Here's Hollywood, and multiple appearances on The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. He also had a small role in the film Bright Road, starring Dorothy Dandridge.

In 1966, Horton starred in The Dangerous Days of Kiowa Jones, described as the first Western produced specifically for television with simultaneous cinema distribution in Europe, made by MGM and co-starring Sal Mineo and Diane Baker. Two years later, he appeared in The Green Slime, a low-budget Japanese-American science fiction film directed by Kinji Fukasaku and shot entirely in Japan, in which he played Jack Rankin, a character leading a space station crew against one-eyed tentacled aliens.

Horton also recorded music, releasing two 45 RPM singles on Columbia Records — "The Very Thought of You" backed with "Hey There," and "King of the Road" backed with "Julie" — as well as an album titled The Very Thought of You on the same label. He performed for many years in theaters and nightclubs across the United States and in Australia, at times alongside his wife, the former Marilynn Bradley, whom he married in 1960. His previous marriages, to Mary Jobe from 1946 to 1950 and to Barbara Ruick from 1953 to 1956, both ended in divorce. He and Marilynn Bradley remained married until his death.

Horton was a licensed pilot and aircraft owner. Among the honors he received were the Golden Boot Award in 2004, the Cowboy Spirit Award at the National Festival of the West, and the Western Legend Award on his 90th birthday. Following a fall in November 2015, he was placed in hospice care and died on March 9, 2016, at the age of 91 in a Los Angeles rehabilitation clinic.