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The Dale Robertson Story

By Darlene Cah 

Key Takeaways 

  • Robertson got into acting by accident. 
  • Robertson earned bronze and silver medals in WWII. 

Overview 

Though Dale Robertson made 40 movies in his Hollywood career, his biggest success came from his roles on television. He’s best known for playing Jim Hardie in Tales of Wells Fargo from 1957 to 1962. 

Early Life 

Born Dayle Lymoine Robertson on July 14, 1923, in Harrah, Oklahoma to parents Melvin and Vervel Robertson, Dale grew up playing sports at Classen High School. As a child, he showed an early love for horses and started riding at age 10. By the time he was in his teens, he was training polo ponies. Almost the opposite of the finesse needed to train horses, Robertson displayed strength and agility as a professional boxer, while attending college at Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore, Oklahoma.   

As a 2nd Lt. Engineering Officer during World War II, Robertson sustained injuries twice during combat and was awarded Bronze and Silver Stars. 

Career 

Robertson maintained that he got into acting by accident, and he turned down his first opportunity to appear on the silver screen. When Robertson was 17, the film producer and co-founder of Columbia Pictures saw him in a boxing match in Wichita, Kansas, and asked him to go to Hollywood to star in a movie called, Golden Boy (1939), about a gifted violinist who must choose between a career in music or his other passion, boxing. Robertson declined the offer, stating that he was too young to leave home, and he had horses to train. The role eventually went to William Holden, who starred in the film with Barbara Stanwyck.  

Despite his efforts to avoid Hollywood, Roberston was destined to become a star. While still in the Army and stationed in California, he hired a local photographer to take his portrait so he could send it to his mother before deploying overseas. The photographer was so impressed with the picture that he enlarged a copy and hung it in his storefront window. He wasn’t the only one who took an interest in the handsome soldier.   

Robertson began getting calls from talent agents. When he returned from the war, he took them up on their offers, but to him, acting was just a means to an end. It was a job, like any other, that allowed him to own a ranch and raise horses. No surprise that he made his career starring in Westerns. Among his movie credits are Fighting Man of the Plains (1949), and The Cariboo Trail both with Randolph Scott (1950), The Outcasts of Poker Flat with Anne Baxter and Cameron Mitchell (1952), Sitting Bull with Mary Murphy and Iron Eyes Cody (1954), Son of Sinbad with Vincent Price (1955), and Law of the Lawless with Yvonne De Carlo and Lon Chaney Jr. (1964). 

While he achieved a fine reputation as an actor, appearing opposite many of Hollywood’s elite, it was television that crowned him a star. His most notable role was special agent Jim Hardie in Tales of Wells Fargo (1957-1962). On the show, Hardie was hired by the Wells Fargo Company to investigate attacks on the stagecoach line. Hardie solved crimes and brought outlaws to justice in the Old West, sometimes encountering legends such as Butch Cassidy, Belle Starr and Jesse James. Hardie was known as “the left-handed gun.” Robertson was right-handed and had to learn to handle a gun with his opposite hand. His horsemanship and horse training experience came in handy, as Roberston rode his beloved horse, Jubilee in the series, and did his own stunts.   

After Tales of Wells Fargo ended, Robertson appeared in a slew of Western movies and returned to television as the star of Iron Horse (1966-1968) about a man who won a half-completed railroad line in a poker game in the 1880s. Robertson appeared in Dynasty and Dallas, and as the star of the short-lived series, J.J. Starbuck (1987-1988). 

He was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in 1983 and received the Golden Boot Award in 1985.  

Though Robertson would attain stardom, he would always be an Oklahoma boy. He and his brother, Chet, started Haymaker Farms, where they raised and trained racehorses, both Quarter Horses and thoroughbreds. They owned and bred over 20 stakes winners and five champions, including world champions, earning millions, and later expanded their business to sell top-quality Quarter Horses and thoroughbred yearlings. When Chet died, the farm was sold, and years later, Dale Robertson and his wife, Susan, retired to his ranch in Yukon, Oklahoma.  

Personal Life 

Robertson was married five times and had only one child from his first marriage. He married for the last time in 1980 to Susan Dee Robbins, and they remained together until his death on February 27, 2013, at age 89.   

 

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