George Montgomery

George Montgomery was boxing champion at the University of Montana where he majored in architecture and interior design. Dropping out a year later he decided to take up boxing more seriously. He moved to California where he was coached by ex-heavyweight world champion James J. Jeffries. While in Hollywood, he came to the attention of the studios (not least, because he was an expert rider) and was hired as a stuntman in 1935.

After doing this for four years, George was offered a contract at 20th Century Fox in 1939, but found himself largely confined to leads in B-westerns.

He did not secure a part in anything even remotely like a prestige picture until his co-starring role in Roxie Hart (1942), opposite Ginger Rogers.

Next, in Orchestra Wives (1942), he played the perfunctory love interest for Ann Rutherford -- though both, inevitably, ended up playing second trombone to Glenn Miller and His Orchestra.

Left Hollywood in 1943 to enlist in the US Army Air Corps. After his discharge in 1946 he went back to Hollywood and resumed his career.

In 1947, George got his first serious break, being cast as Raymond Chandler's private eye Philip Marlowe in The Brasher Doubloon (1947). Reviewers, however, compared his performance unfavourably with that of Humphrey Bogart and found the film 'pallid' overall. So it was back to the saddle for George.

Unable to shake his image as a cowboy actor he starred in scores of films with titles like Belle Starr's Daughter (1948), Dakota Lil (1950), Jack McCall, Desperado (1953) and Masterson of Kansas (1954) at Columbia, and for producer Edward Small at United Artists.

When not cleaning up the Wild West with his six-shooter he branched out into adventure films set in exotic locales (notably as Harry Quartermain in Watusi (1959)). During the 60s, he also wrote, directed and starred in several long-forgotten, low-budget wartime potboilers made in the Philippines.

After his divorce from Dinah Shore, in 1963 his private life again made headlines when his housekeeper, suffering obsessive infatuation, attempted to shoot the actor, planning to then commit suicide, but failing in both endeavors.