page_title: Dan Blocker
section_title: Bonanza (1959–1972)
hierarchical_section_title: Dan Blocker / Biography / Acting career / Bonanza (1959–1972)
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Jack Benny and Dan Blocker from a Jack Benny television special. Benny and Blocker were doing a skit that involved a spoof of western films.
context_page_description: Bobby Dan Davis Blocker was an American television actor and Korean War veteran, who played Hoss Cartwright in the long-running NBC Western television series Bonanza.
context_section_description: Blocker's big break also came in 1959, when he was cast as Eric "Hoss" Cartwright on the NBC television series Bonanza and played the role in 415 episodes until his death. Blocker said he portrayed the gentle-natured Hoss character with a Stephen Grellet excerpt in mind: "We shall pass this way on Earth but once, if there is any kindness we can show, or good act we can do, let us do it now, for we will never pass this way again."
  In 1963, Blocker starred with Frank Sinatra in the comedy Come Blow Your Horn. He worked with Sinatra again in 1968 in the Tony Rome film sequel Lady in Cement, playing a menacing tough guy. Stanley Kubrick attempted to cast Blocker in his film Dr. Strangelove, after Peter Sellers elected not to add the role of Major T.J. "King" Kong to his multiple other roles, but according to the film's co-writer, Terry Southern, Blocker's agent rejected the script. The role went to Slim Pickens, who played the iconic scene of riding an atomic bomb down while waving his cowboy hat. In 1968, Blocker starred as John Killibrew, a blacksmith, who had convinced a number of settlers to follow him to California and founded the town of Arkana. This TV film, Something for a Lonely Man, also featured Susan Clark, John Dehner, Warren Oates and Don Stroud.  In 1970, Blocker portrayed a love-shy galoot in The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County, with Nanette Fabray as a love prospect and a supporting cast featuring Jim Backus, Jack Elam, Noah Beery Jr., and Mickey Rooney. Blocker also appeared on NBC's The Flip Wilson Show comedy hour.
  Director Robert Altman befriended Blocker while directing episodes of Bonanza. Years later, he cast Blocker as Roger Wade in The Long Goodbye, but Blocker died before filming began. The role then went to Sterling Hayden, and the film was dedicated to Blocker.
  Also in 1963, Blocker started and received partial ownership in a successful chain of Bonanza Steakhouse restaurants (Ponderosa Steakhouses started in 1965), in exchange for serving (in character as Hoss) as their commercial spokesman and making personal appearances at franchises.
caption: Jack Benny and Blocker
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