page_title: Dale Robertson
section_title: Television
hierarchical_section_title: Dale Robertson / Career / Television
caption_attribution_description: Photo of Dale Robertson on the set of the television program Tales of Wells Fargo.
context_page_description: Dayle Lymoine Robertson was an American actor best known for his starring roles on television. He played the roving investigator Jim Hardie in the television series Tales of Wells Fargo and Ben Calhoun, the owner of an incomplete railroad line in Iron Horse. He often was presented as a deceptively thoughtful but modest Western hero. From 1968 to 1970, Robertson was the fourth and final host of the anthology series Death Valley Days.
context_section_description: Described by TIME in 1959 as "probably the best horseman on television", for most of his career, Robertson played in western films and television shows—well over 60 titles in all. Tales of Wells Fargo, his best-remembered series, aired on NBC from 1957 to 1961, when it moved to ABC and expanded to an hour-long program for its final season in 1961–1962. The show originally was produced by Nat Holt whom Robertson felt he owed his career to for giving him his first leading roles. Robertson also did the narration for Tales of Wells Fargo through which he often presented his own commentary on matters of law, morality, and common sense. He was unique among his television contemporaries, stating that he hated the gun he was forced to carry, but saw it as a necessary evil, a "tool of the trade", and kept practicing. In its cover story on television westerns, published March 30, 1959, Time reported Robertson was 6 feet tall, weighed 180 pounds, and measured 42-34-34. He sometimes made use of his physique in "beefcake" scenes, such as one in 1952's Return of the Texan where he is seen bare-chested and sweaty, repairing a fence.
  
  In 1960, Robertson guest-starred as himself in NBC's The Ford Show, starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. In 1962, he similarly appeared and sang a perfect rendition of "High Noon" on the short-lived western comedy and variety series The Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Show. In 1963, after Tales of Wells Fargo ended its five-year run, he played the lead role in the first of A.C. Lyles'  Law of the Lawless. 
  Robertson created United Screen Arts in 1965 which released two of his films, The Man from Button Willow (1965, animated) and The One Eyed Soldiers (1966). Robertson filmed a television pilot about Diamond Jim Brady that was not picked up as a series.
  In the 1966–67 season, Robertson starred in Scalplock another television pilot released as a movie that became The Iron Horse, in which his character wins an incomplete railroad line in a poker game and then decides to manage the company. In 1968, he succeeded Robert Taylor as the host of Death Valley Days, a role formerly held by Stanley Andrews and future U.S. President Ronald W. Reagan. In rebroadcasts, Death Valley Days is often known as Trails West, with Ray Milland in the role of revised host.
  Robertson guest-starred on the Nov. 17, 1969 episode of The Dean Martin Show.
caption: Dale Robertson 1959
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