Paul Brinegar
| Paul Brinegar | |
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 Brinegar in 1968. |
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| Born | December 19, 1917 Tucumcari, New Mexico, USA |
| Died | March 27, 1995 (aged 77) Los Angeles, California |
| Resting place | Los Angeles National Cemetery |
| Years active | 1946–1994 |
Paul Brinegar (December 19, 1917 – March 27, 1995) was an American character actor.
Brinegar made over 100 appearances between 1946 and 1994, appearing in many western films, and played the barman in Clint Eastwood's High Plains Drifter in 1973. He was best known for his long-running role as the cook, George Washington Wishbone, on the CBS series Rawhide from 1959 to 1966, which also starred Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood. He had even played Tom Jefferson Jeffrey in the 1958 movie Cattle Empire upon which Rawhide was based. Prior to that he played Mayor Jim "Dog" Kelly in the western series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, in which he appeared twenty-four times from 1956 to 1958. In 1959, he played Ludwig, the bartender, in the episode "The Ringer" of the western series The Texan, starring Rory Calhoun. In 1969, he appeared in the western film Charro! starring Elvis Presley.
Brinegar made two guest appearances on Perry Mason. His first appearance during the series' first season in early 1958 was as Tom Sackett in "The Case of the Sun Bather's Diary;" his second appearance in the series' ninth and final season in 1966, he played Jason Rohan in "The Case of the Unwelcome Well."
The role of Wishbone was loosely carried over into the 1968-1970 CBS western series Lancer in which Brinegar played Jelly Hoskins. His co-stars were Andrew Duggan, James Stacy, and Wayne Maunder.
In the early 1980s Brinegar played an occasional humorous cowboy-like character, "Lamar Pettybone" during the first season of ABC's TV series Matt Houston from 1982 to 1983.
Filmography
Brinegar guest starred mostly in westerns, including the Saturday morning series on CBS, Tales of the Texas Rangers in the 1956 episode "The Hobo."
He guest starred on Rod Cameron's western-themed crime drama, State Trooper.
His non-western roles included:
- The Public Defender (1954)
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents "Premonition" (1955)
- Noah's Ark "The Guide" (1957)
- Perry Mason "The Case of the Sun Bather's Diary" (1958)
- Peter Gunn "Short a Motive" (1961)
- Perry Mason "The Case of the Unwelcome Well" (1966)
- Country Boy as Link Byrd, Sr., the father of Nashville musician played by Randy Boone (1966)
- Daniel Boone "Take the Southbound Stage" (1967)
- Charro! (1969)
- Cannon "Duel in the Desert" (1974)
- The Six Million Dollar Man "Taneha" (1975)
- Emergency! "Grateful" (1975)
- CHiPs "Undertow" (1977)
- The Dukes of Hazzard "Route 7-11" (1979)
- CHiPs "Overload" (1982)
Character actor of films and television, Paul Brinegar specialized in playing feisty, grizzled cowboy sidekicks. Fans of the Western series Rawhide may remember Brinegar for playing Wishbone, the grumbly old cook. He was also known for playing Lamar Pettybone on the early-1980s television series Matt Houston. He reprised (sort of) his Wishbone character for the 1991 TV movie The Gambler Returns: The Luck of the Draw, in which he has a brief monologue into which is worked the names of about a dozen old television western series. Born and reared in Tucumcari in eastern New Mexico, Brinegar headed to California as a young man and made his feature film debut in Larceny (1948). From there, he launched a steady film career that slowed down considerably in the late 1950s, after he began appearing on television but did not end until 1994, when Brinegar made his final screen appearance, as a stagecoach driver, in the 1994 film version of Maverick.
External links
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