Post by STEPHEN SNYDER

He was lying on a table in a hospital basement.   Two doctors had already pronounced him dead. A skiing accident on Mammoth Mountain — a fall, and one of his own ski poles driven straight through his heart.   The paperwork was finished. The body had been set aside.   Then a third doctor — a heart specialist, in the building only to visit a friend — took a shortcut through the basement. He glanced at the man on the table and saw what the others had missed: a flicker of life.   Emergency surgery followed. And against every odd, the big man lived. Two months later, he was back at work, filming in Spain.   To understand how a man cheats death like that, go back to Hartford, Illinois, 1927. A Depression-era boy, born with a twin sister, who fashioned his own weights out of concrete. By 16 he had already worked a factory floor, a Mississippi riverboat, a golf course, and a carnival. At 17 he joined the Merchant Marine. After the war: the Texas oil fields, sheet metal, a nightclub bouncer's post, and finally a security job at the Sands in Las Vegas.   It was there that people in the movie business noticed him — 6 feet 6, blue-eyed, built like a monument. One introduction led to Cecil B. DeMille and a small role in The Ten Commandments. Warner Bros. saw the footage, bought out his contract, gave him a new first name, and tested him against every leading man in Hollywood. Jack Warner watched the reels, pointed, and said: "That is Cheyenne."   The series — television's first hour-long Western — ran seven seasons and 103 episodes. He played a roaming cowboy who was slow to anger and fought only when he had to. He sang, too; that baritone voice earned him a record album. Then came the films: Fort Dobbs, Yellowstone Kelly, None But the Brave for Frank Sinatra, The Night of the Grizzly — his own favorite — and The Dirty Dozen.   But here is the part the box-office numbers never captured. Off-screen, he was exactly the man he played. Humble. Gentle. Gracious to every fan who ever asked for an autograph. A giant who used his size to reassure, never to intimidate. People who met him left saying the same thing: he was simply a good man.   He passed away on May 21, 2018, at 90 — nine days short of his 91st birthday.   His name was Clint Walker. The gentle giant who died twice, and lived more fully than most men do once.   Now you see the whole picture.   #ClintWalker #Cheyenne #ClassicTV #WesternMovies #GoldenAgeOfHollywood #TheRestOfTheStory #GentleGiant