Rockne Tarkington

William Rockne Tarkington, Jr. (July 15, 1931 – April 5, 2015) was an American actor who worked across stage, film, and television. A native of Junction City, Kansas, he built a career that spanned several decades and multiple entertainment mediums.

Tarkington launched his professional life as a stage actor, appearing on Broadway in 1961 in Mandingo. He subsequently made the transition to television, accumulating guest appearances on a wide range of series including The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Kraft Suspense Theatre, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Ben Casey, Mission: Impossible, and Bewitched, among many others. He holds the distinction of being the first credited Black actor to appear on The Andy Griffith Show. His television work also included recurring roles, among them multiple characters on Tarzan — Young Chief, Ramahit, Ahmid, and Rao — and the starring role of Elihu Morgan on Danger Island, part of Hanna-Barbera's Banana Splits Adventure Hour. In the 1983–84 season of Matt Houston, he played the recurring character "Too Mean" Malone, and he made additional appearances in episodes of Bearcats!, Baretta, and MacGyver throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

On film, Tarkington took the title role in the blaxploitation picture Black Samson (1974) and co-starred with Richard X. Slattery in both The No Mercy Man (1973) and Zebra Force (1976). His broader film credits include Soldier in the Rain (1963), Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion (1965), The Great White Hope (1970), Beware! The Blob (1972), Melinda (1972), The Baltimore Bullet (1980), National Lampoon's Movie Madness (1983), The Ice Pirates (1984), Uphill All the Way (1986), and Death Before Dishonor (1987). He was also the first choice to portray Williams in Enter the Dragon (1973), but was replaced by Jim Kelly just before filming began.

Tarkington spent much of his career based in Los Angeles, where he was married to fellow screen actor Joan Blackman from July 1968 to October 1970. In the 1990s he returned to Kansas to care for his ailing mother. During that period he converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after seeing a television commercial for the church.