Dan Blocker~
A Whale Of A Hero~March 1960

     "Bonanza" has rescued a 300-pound giant from playing heavies.

     At this moment--with some precincts still to be heard from--it looks very much as if the surprise hit of NBC's multi-starred, hour-long Western, Bonanza may be a 6-foot-four inch, 300-pound behemoth of a man named Dan Blocker.

     The blonde, blue-eyed Blocker, a sort of king-size Wallace Beery, is unusual--on many levels.  In the first case there is encased in that hulking frame, a brain.  Blocker holds a Master's Degree in theater arts, and before television got him was well on his way to a Ph.D.  In the second place he is not the type one might expect to star in his own right, especially as a romantic matinee idol.  Yet early this season Bonanza presented --and successfully--a story in which Blocker fell in love with a beautiful girl, played by Inger Stevens.

     Blocker really owes his eminence in TV to producer David Dortort.  Dortort who was doing "The Restless Gun", at the time, didn't see why the big man should be confined to playing dim-witted heavies, as other producers, as other producers had invariably seen fit to cast him.  Dortort's decision to put him in a sympathetic role--the lead in a sentimental story about a hulking deaf-mute --ended a three month siege of inactivity for Blocker, in 1957 and encouraged him to keep going as an actor.

     Explained Dortort: "The man had range, I saw in him great tenderness and sensabilities.  Perhaps another Wallace Beery.  I remember he was all ready to quit acting and go back to teaching school.  I told him to stick around.  He did.  And he has hardly missed a day's work since".

     The fact that Blocker can act surprises only those who don't know him.  Indeed, the unexpected has been the key to his career.  The son of a Texas-farmer-blacksmith-grocer-merchant, he scaled 6 feet and weighed 200 pounds when he was 12, and could outwork, and if necessary, outfight men twice his age.

     Because of his enourmous size,--"I can lose five pounds by walking to the corner store", says Dan--he was much in demand for scholarships to football-conscious universities.  In his three years at Sul Ross State College (in Alpine, Texas), he participated in 33 football games, helped win 32 and tie one.  He also threw the shot-put some 51 feet, a very credible toss, in the pre-Parry O' Brian days.

     The Sul Ross drama club was doing "Arsenic and Old Lace", and they needed someone to pack up the bodies from the cellar for the play's celebrated curtain call.  Since Blocker was then pursuing a young lady drama student, she was able to talk him into taking the part.  "I did it reluctantly", Blocker remembers.  "And I hooked a pal into it, too.  Much to my surprise we had a ball.  I came back for more.  Pretty soon the rest of the football team began to get the bug.  In fact, at one point I directed a production of "Mr. Roberts" made up of every man on the football team.  After that I couldn't get those guys off my back.  They all wanted to be actors".

     Blocker became so interested he changed his major from physical education to drama.  His special interest was the Elizabethan theater, and his "Othello" (which he played with a heavy coating of Max Factor No.14), is still remembered at Sul Ross.  His most notable achievement however, was his performance as De Lawd in "Green Pastures", a production which won him an award for the best college acting of 1949.

     In 1950, he tried stock (at Brattle Hall Theater in Boston) and Broadway (he was in the Louis Calhern "King Lear") but decided the theater was too rough for him.  Shortly, thereafter, he was drafted, and after returning from the Korean war in 1952, married his college sweetheart and settled down to schoolteaching while continuing to work on his Master's Degree in drama at Sul Ross.

     Then in 1956 he went to work on his Ph.D at the University of Calfornia in Los Angeles.  Finances were a problem and it was then that he fell back on his training as an actor by seeking work in TV.  The results in the end were spectacular.

     "I really felt I was making headway when I played a character named Hog Nose Huges in a 'Maverick' over at Warner's", explains Blocker.  "Hog Nose was a lovable souse no jail could hold.  That was the first time I was told I was like Wallace Beery.  And it frightened me.  I couldn't help but feel a great deal of humility.  To me he was a giant."

     Blocker thinks that he played almost every show in TV during the next two years.  At least he has trouble naming shows he hasn't played.  Curiously enough, being an excellent actor, he does not consider himself as such.

     "I'm me", he insisted.  "I like being me real good.  If I have appeal it is to the old farmer and his wife, not to the kind who write the fan mail".

     Today with success at hand, it would be difficult to find a happier man.  He says: "Doing the show is a whale of a ball.  My problem is I can't find anybody I don't like.  In fact, things are so good, I'm afraid it's a frameup.  My wife and I just bought a little place--just a house.  It fits us perfectly".

     Dan has also bought himself one of the small English economy cars.  "I just put it on and take it off".

     On stage, Blocker is strictly a family man.  He has twin girls, 6; a son, 4, and another son, 2.  So far their daddy's newfound fame has not created any serious problems.  Blocker says:"When they ask me, 'Daddy, why do you watch people on TV?' I tell 'em they don't watch me, they watch the show".

     If Blocker had his choice today, however, he thinks he might not be an actor at all.  He loves coaching.  He is also drawn to the law ("I'd like to be a top criminal lawyer"), to evengelism ("a personal thing"), and to professional soldiering.

     Also, he adds, "I'd like to get my Ph.D".


     Written by Dwight Whitney for TV Guide