Steve Darrell

Steve Darrell, born Darrell Eugene Horsfall on November 19, 1904, in Osage, Iowa, was an American actor who worked in theater, film, and television under variations of his stage name, including Stevan Darrell and Steven Darrell. The eldest of four children born to Moss David Horsfall and Katherine Agnes McHugh, he grew up in Iowa and attended Washington High School in Cedar Rapids.

Darrell's professional acting career began in 1931 with the Trousdale Players in Des Moines, Iowa, and he also performed with the Cedar Rapids Community Players during this period. His stage work extended to Broadway, where he appeared in 1943 in The Barber Had Two Sons.

His screen career launched with Code of the Secret Service in 1939, and he went on to accumulate an extensive filmography concentrated heavily in westerns throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Among his film appearances were Nothing but Trouble (1944), a string of 1946 westerns including Heldorado, Roll on Texas Moon, Lightning Raiders, Terrors on Horseback, and Gentlemen with Guns, and numerous additional westerns through the late 1940s and into the 1950s. He appeared in The Tall Men (1955) as Colonel Norris of the U.S. Cavalry, as well as Tarantula (1955), The Monolith Monsters (1957), and Adventures of Frank and Jesse James (1948), among many others.

Television also featured prominently in Darrell's later career. He portrayed the Comanche chief Little Elk in the 1958 Cheyenne episode "Renegades," played Ben Russell in a 1959 episode of The Rifleman, and appeared in multiple episodes of Wanted Dead or Alive, including the role of Sheriff Simmons and Sheriff Toole in two separate season two episodes. He also appeared in Gunsmoke in 1965 as Judge.

Darrell died on August 14, 1970, in Hollywood, California, from a brain tumor. He is buried at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery.