1. Bobby Dan Davis Blocker was an American television actor and Korean War veteran, who played Hoss Cartwright in the NBC Western television series Bonanza.
30 Facts About Dan Blocker
1. 2.
Dan Blocker enrolled in a San Antonio school in 1940.
3.
Dan Blocker went to Hardin-Simmons University and Sul Ross State University, where he earned a degree in speech and drama.
4.
Dan Blocker worked as a rodeo performer and a bouncer in a bar while a student.
5.
Dan Blocker was a high-school English and drama teacher in Sonora, Texas, from 1953 to 1954.
6.
Dan Blocker was a sixth-grade teacher and coach at Eddy Elementary School in Carlsbad, New Mexico, and then a teacher in California.
7.
Dan Blocker was drafted into the United States Army during the Korean War.
8.
Dan Blocker received a Purple Heart for wounds in combat.
9.
In 1957, Dan Blocker appeared in a Three Stooges short, Outer Space Jitters, playing the Goon, billed as "Don Dan Blocker".
10.
In 1957, Dan Blocker was cast in episodes of David Dortort's NBC series The Restless Gun as a blacksmith and as a cattleman planning to take his hard-earned profit to return to his family land in his native Minnesota.
11.
Dan Blocker was seen in "The Senorita Makes a Choice", a 1958 episode of Walt Disney's Zorro series, as well as an episode, "Underground Ambush", of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, playing Mule Conklin.
12.
In 1958, Dan Blocker had a supporting role as Sergeant Broderick in "The Dora Gray Story" on NBC's Wagon Train.
13.
Dan Blocker was cast as bearded poker-playing rodeo performer Cloudy Sims in the 1958 episode "Rodeo" on the David Janssen crime drama, Richard Diamond, Private Detective.
14.
In 1963, Dan Blocker starred with Frank Sinatra in the comedy Come Blow Your Horn.
15.
Dan Blocker worked with Sinatra again in 1968 in the Tony Rome film sequel Lady in Cement, playing a menacing tough guy.
16.
In 1968, Dan Blocker starred as John Killibrew, a blacksmith, who had convinced a number of settlers to follow him to California and founded the town of Arkana.
17.
In 1970, Dan Blocker portrayed a love-shy galoot in The Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County, with Nanette Fabray as a love prospect and a supporting cast featuring Jim Backus, Jack Elam, Noah Beery Jr.
18.
Dan Blocker appeared on NBC's The Flip Wilson Show comedy hour.
19.
Director Robert Altman befriended Dan Blocker while directing episodes of Bonanza.
20.
Also in 1963, Dan Blocker started and received partial ownership in a successful chain of Bonanza Steakhouse restaurants, in exchange for serving, in character as Hoss, as their commercial spokesman, and making personal appearances at franchises.
21.
Originally from Bowie County, Texas, Dan Blocker arrived in Los Angeles in 1958 planning to do post-grad work at UCLA but began getting acting roles.
22.
Dan Blocker played in Summer Stock in Boston in 1950 after getting his degree at the college.
23.
Dan Blocker married Dolphia Parker, whom he had met while a student at Sul Ross State University.
24.
David Dan Blocker won a 1998 Emmy for producing Don King: Only in America.
25.
In 1968, Dan Blocker backed then-US Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota for the Democratic presidential nomination.
26.
Dan Blocker later supported the eventual Democratic Party nominee, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, of Minnesota, for the presidency against the Republican Richard Nixon.
27.
Dan Blocker kept a house in Inglewood, California, and a 6,000-square-foot Tudor-style mansion in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles.
28.
Dan Blocker owned a 1965 Huffaker Genie MK10 race car, nicknamed the "Vinegaroon".
29.
On May 13,1972, Blocker died in Los Angeles, at age 43, of a pulmonary embolism, following gallbladder surgery at Daniel Freeman hospital.
30.
Dan Blocker's remains were interred in a family plot in Woodmen Cemetery, in De Kalb, Texas.