Wright King

Wright Thornburgh King (January 11, 1923 – November 25, 2018) was an American actor who worked in stage, film, and television across a career spanning more than four decades. Born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, King trained at the St. Louis School of Theater, graduating in 1941. Before launching his professional career, he enlisted in the United States Navy and served in the South Pacific campaign from 1943 to 1945 during World War II.

King's Broadway career ran from 1947 to 1950 and included three productions: Borned in Texas, The Bird Cage, and the Tennessee Williams drama A Streetcar Named Desire. His performance in the original stage production of A Streetcar Named Desire drew praise from drama critic Harold Hobson. King subsequently appeared in the 1951 film adaptation of the same work, which starred Vivien Leigh. He made his television debut in 1949, playing Midshipman Bascomb in the series Captain Video and His Video Rangers.

King became particularly associated with the Western genre on television. He is best known for his recurring role as Jason Nichols in Wanted Dead or Alive (1958–1961), the Steve McQueen series in which he appeared in eleven episodes, portraying a young sidekick in nine of them and a separate character, Joe Hooker, in another. He appeared in the Gunsmoke episode "Born to Hang" (1957) as Joe Digger, a falsely accused horse thief, and returned to that series in additional episodes in 1959, 1961, 1964, and 1965. In 1958 he played the Kiowa Kid/Nevada Jones in the Cheyenne episode "Ghost of the Cimarron." He also appeared alongside Richard Boone in two episodes of Have Gun – Will Travel and in episodes of The Silent Service and Johnny Jupiter. In 1974, he portrayed U.S. Senator Richard B. Russell Jr. of Georgia in the television film The Missiles of October, a dramatization of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

His film credits included Cast a Long Shadow (1959), King Rat (1965), Planet of the Apes (1968), Finian's Rainbow (1968), and Invasion of the Bee Girls (1973). Throughout his career King worked in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

King married June Ellen Roth in 1948. The couple had three sons: Wright Jr., Michael, and actor Meegan King. He died on November 25, 2018, at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 95.