LEE HORSLEY - The Washington Post

August 16, 2024

LOS ANGELES -- Johnny Crawford was a bit rusty, and it showed.

The 43-year-old actor had a number of lines to deliver, and he was tripping over a different one each time through the scene. The retakes were into double figures.

But no one was visibly upset. The director and crew shooting the scene on the Lorimar Television movie lot were calm and kept straight faces. One of his co-stars, Chuck Connors, flirted with young women between scenes.

The star of the show, Lee Horsley, was totally cool. He delivered his lines with patience and precision in each take.

He seemed in every respect to be a man at ease, a man at home. If his feelings were dampened by anything, it may have been the weather. Rain had kept the day's shooting indoors, and in town, rather than at the nearby ranch that serves as the show's chief outdoor location.

Not to worry, pardner. Indoors or out, they were shooting a western, and that seemed to suit Horsley just fine. After all, he always wanted to be a cowboy. And in many ways he is. He seems truly at home on this range.

And at home in "Paradise," the western series now in its second season on CBS, a show that often is reminiscent not only of the old west, but of old westerns.

The recent episode featuring Crawford, now a real estate investor, and Connors -- "Please spell my name right -- it has an S at the end" -- reunited the father-son team from "The Rifleman" series of 30 (yes, 30) years ago.

This week and next, the series replays a two-part episode featuring Hugh O'Brien and Gene Barry recreating their TV roles as Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson.

"Paradise" brought Horsley back to television after an absence from series work dating back to the "Matt Houston" show, which ended a three-year run in 1985. "I have a lot of neat hobbies," said Horsley, speaking of the days that are not filled with series television work. "But after a while, you get nervous. But you also get a lot of ideas."

One of the ideas that came into view came from David Jacobs, a co-executive producer of "Knots Landing" who wanted to do a contemporary show dealing with a single-parent family. Along the way to acceptance, his idea was reworked into a turn-of-the-century western.

"I came into it after it was in its full western form," said Horsley. "I wasn't aware until I started that it was originally a contemporary show. I can certainly see it had parallels with a lot of the problems of 1890 -- the single parent, that aspect."

But most of all, it parallels Horsley's interest in the west.

"You could say I always wanted to be a cowboy," he said, relaxing over a Chinese lunch between shooting sessions at Lorimar. He was born in Muleshoe, Tex., and grew up on his grandfather's cotton farm near Plains, Tex.

There was, he pointed out, a big difference between a farm and a ranch. On the farm, "you didn't own horses because you had to feed them," he said. "Across the road, they had horses. The grass is always greener. I'd have given my right arm to be playing with those guys over there rather than riding a tractor. But I was close to it."

The family left Texas when he was young and went to Colorado. "My dad kind of wanted to get as far away from that life as he could. He saw what it did to his dad -- basically it killed him early. But as a kid you don't see all of that. To me it was basically pretty romantic ... The only things I remember are the good things."

Horsley's dad went into the roofing and tile business, did odd jobs, and was in sales. Lee remembers growing up hunting and fishing and skiing around the Denver suburb of Englewood. The Colorado roots remain deep. Horsley's dad still lives in Gypsum, and his mother is in Denver. Both have remarried.

Horsley's wife, Stephanie, comes from the same area and has a huge family, making things complicated during the holidays. Given a 10-day hiatus at Christmas, the Horsleys decided that rather than going from Colorado door to Colorado door and returning to California exhausted, they would rent a big place in the mountains and invite any relative to come see them. "You know what? Every one of them did!" said Horsley. "Not a single one missed out. We had 16 people on Christmas eve. My brother's kids and my two kids got together for their first Christmas together. It was great."

When he wasn't out hunting and fishing, Horsley, as a junior and senior high student, played football and swam. Football put his knees through the wringer.

"I was wearing a cast every season I played," recalled the ex-fullback. "So I figured, something's wrong here. This is not working out. And to be perfectly honest, I wasn't very good at it. I could throw the ball, but I had no speed. I'm good for five yards, but if I ever broke open, I was so surprised, anyone could catch me."

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In high school he was lured to the stage as well as the gridiron. Horsley had displayed a good voice in choral work and was invited to try out for a part in a musical. He got the part of Cornelius in "Hello, Dolly."

"People liked it," he said. "And they laughed -- at the funny stuff. That knocked me out. It was such a wonderful feeling.

"To kids, when you're that age, acting is such a wonderful thing. It offers a chance to be somebody else, especially at a time in your life when maybe you're not real comfortable with who you are. Boy, to slap on the costume and be somebody else -- it's really a godsend for a lot of people. It was for me. It straightened my act out. My grades got better. It worked out pretty good."

He studied acting at the University of Northern Colorado, "which is certainly not known for its theater department. That's probably why I changed my major to fishing altogether after the second year."

He got a union card after that second year and began traveling in stock theater. Then there was a break into film, though all his work had been on stage: a part in the TV miniseries "The Gangster Chronicles." Later he starred in "The Sword and the Sorcerer."

His big break came when he landed the role of Archie Goodwin, assistant to "Nero Wolfe," who was played by William Conrad.

And then he became "Matt Houston," a super-rich Texas oilman who would leave his ranch each week to pursue detective work as a hobby.

Now he's playing Ethan Cord in "Paradise," a semi-reformed gunfighter charged with the care of four orphans and an interest in the local banker, played by Sigrid Thornton.

"Paradise" comes at a time when the western format is showing at least a spark of life after a long dormancy. The feature film "Silverado" was a warning shot that the western might be moseying back, and "Lonesome Dove" was television's most successful miniseries in years. With the addition this season of "Young Riders," television has two weekly western series. This month the corral gets positively crowded as CBS next week offers "Gunsmoke II," another TV movie reprise of the TV series that ran for an incredible 20 years.

"It's coming back," said Horsley of the western, "because it's a real good time for it. People want to see it. They're ready for the romantic aspect of it," free of any gimmicks.

"The western has always been a morality play, and I think people want to see that. There is a right, and there's something that's done about it. You don't have to worry about going into all the gray areas around all the fringes. It's well defined. I think they're back to stay ...

"I grew up on them. I missed them. I liked the code of the west ... That's why I care so much about this show and what I'm doing now."

Horsley, at 37, has a bit of gray sprouting in his beard and looked comfortable in his western garb -- a shirt, suit pants and vest, all striped. The outfit was set off nicely by the white socks and sneakers he wore for the indoor shooting. But chic sneaks aside, he is surely one of the more genuine cowboys to star in a western. About a dozen years ago, he began spending time with cousins who were on the rodeo circuit. He learned to rope steers and went on trail drives. The dreams he had as a kid watching the cowboys across the road became reality. And now that reality is played out again in fantasy on "Paradise."

When talk turned to the great western films, he brought up the name of director John Ford.

"I'd love to be a part of an epic," he said. "I'd love to do a John Ford movie. I'd love to have ridden hard and fast on a flat run beside Ben Johnson."

He can experience such action vicariously. Johnson, the veteran western actor, runs celebrity rodeos in which Horsley shows off his steer-roping skills. "I sat down next to him, and I asked him, what was it like? He said, 'You know, he had me riding so damn fast all the time I wasn't enjoying it a single bit. I was just hanging on.'"

Horsley also admires the work of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart in westerns. "He made a great western character," Horsley said of Stewart. "The guys who run their cattle on drives -- they all look and sound like Jimmy Stewart."

Horsley also has a hero, or heroine, at home in the person of his wife. "I don't know how she does it, looking after the kids and me," he said. Amid the stress of doing a series, "she takes care of me. Patches me up and throws me back in the ring.

"In this business, the hours are incredible. As an actor you've got to sort out all the problems, the things you've been through that day. When a show ends, five years from now, people won't remember who the sound mixer was, a lot of times even who the director was. But it's my show. It has become my show. That's what people will remember. That's why it's important to make it good. Five years down the line, they will associate it with me."

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