Saturdays with the Stars: Ward Bond

Each month of 2022 we will be taking a look at one-time film actors who became foundational figures in the early days of television, stretching from the early 1950's into the mid-1960's.  Last month we talked about John Payne, a leading man of the 1940's who never really caught on in the way some of his peers did, and eventually ended up being part of the TV western trend of the late 1950's.  This month, we're going to talk about a performer who was also part of the television western trend of the late 1950's, on a series even more successful despite the fact that this actor, until he went to television, never had the leading man opportunities that Payne did.  This month's star is Ward Bond.

Born in Nebraska just after the turn of the century, Wardell Edwin Bond (called Ward for short) moved to Denver as a child where he graduated from high school.  While in college (where he was a noted football star), he made the acquaintance of two men that would change his life: fellow football player John Wayne and, after many football players on the USC team were cast in a film called Salute, film director John Ford.  While Wayne would become Ford's favorite leading man, it was Bond that would end up working with him the most, appearing in 25 of his movies in the coming decades.

Ward Bond, as I stated above, is not a leading man in any traditional sense, but you have seen him in movies even if you're the most casual of movie fan.  Bond has appeared in film classics as diverse as It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, Gone with the Wind, It's a Wonderful Life, and The Searchers; in fact, he appeared in more of the AFI's "100 Years...100 Movies" list than any other actor, and was in thirteen films nominated for Best Picture (again, more than any other actor).  In total, Bond appeared n over 200 Hollywood movies throughout his decades-long career, putting him in the company of prolific actors like John Carradine (whom, he worked with in nine films, as well as several TV episodes).  Bond, though, rarely got the lead in any of these films, and it wasn't until Wagon Train in 1957 that he got to take centerstage as Major Seth Adams.  The series for NBC was a big hit, and would be Bond's successful swan song-he would die before the entire series was run, eventually having his character replaced by John McIntire.  This month, we're going to take a look at Bond's career as a character actor, highlighting some of the classics of his that I haven't seen, including one of the Best Picture nominees and at least one film that he made with both Ford & Wayne, trying to understand why it was he fit so well into the role of character actor...but couldn't jump to the top of the call sheet until he got to television.