Clint Walker, that roguish, solid frontier He-Man, personified hairy chested American virility and manhood, a big six-foot-six baritone voiced love god of the West. He was a clear-eyed Frontiersman, shy with women, with a big, shirtless frame. Like Shatner, he always found a way to get his shirt off, but unlike Shatner, it wasn't horrible beyond belief to have that happen!
The first thing I ever saw Clint Walker in was not his work with Westerns like the TV series Cheyenne, but a version of the Theodore Sturgeon story Killdozer! Or as I like to say it out loud, Killdozer Exclamation Point. The story of Killdozer Exclamation Point featured a mysterious alien object that possessed a bulldozer and turned it into a killing machine, using cunning to ambush and murder a construction crew. Believe or not, this was considered one of the best stories of science fiction's golden age. And in defense, I can say that it didn't feature the same wisecracking, cigar-chomping badass solving the problem with engineering.
Startlingly, Clint Walker actually did have a pretty good singing voice: he released an album, and to my great astonishment it wasn't terrible. He has a very deep singing voice that emerges from his big chest, turns his whole body into a wind instrument.
I was born into the first generation to grow up without the Western playing any role in our lives. An America in love with the West seems to me, almost like a totally alien planet.
2 comments:
Ah...Clint.
Sigh. :-)
It's a shame we don't have men like that anymore on TV or in the movies. Hugh Jackman comes close but, while I love his Wolverine body, there's something about Clint's less defined body that resonates with me.
Oh, I am forgetting Patrick Warburton but he's not buff enough. Still hot though. He gets points for doing cartoon voices too (don't ask me why I think like that.)
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