1. Don Durant's father was killed in a truck accident near Bakersfield two months before Durant's birth; his mother remarried three times before she died of lung cancer at the age of only forty-six in 1959.
21 Facts About Don Durant
1. 2.
Don Durant opened at many prestigious nightclubs, such as The Sands and the Sahara in Las Vegas.
3.
Don Durant garnered a small role in the 1955 Van Heflin film Battle Cry.
4.
Don Durant helped to build the first kinescopic recorder and stereophonic sound recorder for Warner Brothers.
5.
Don Durant sang Groucho Marx's popular "It's delightful, it's Delovely, it's DeSoto" advertising jingle for the former DeSoto automobiles.
6.
In 1955, Don Durant met big band leader Ray Anthony and began filming various television advertisements.
7.
In 1956, Don Durant starred and did his own stunts in Roger Corman's She-Gods of Shark Reef, which became a cult classic.
8.
Don Durant appeared in an episode of Sergeant Preston of the Yukon the same year as Jack Elders, son of Tom Elders played by George Selk titled "The Limping King" and another episode titled "Phantom of Phoenixville" as Jack Flynn.
9.
Don Durant had auditioned for the role of Bart but was instead cast as a singing bad guy in the episode.
10.
In 1957, celebrity journalist Walter Winchell reported that Don Durant was courting Carole Mathews, an actress twelve years his senior, who in 1958 joined the cast of the NBC western series, The Californians.
11.
About this time, Don Durant met Wroe while they were en route to film an advertisement for the Ford Motor Company.
12.
Don Durant spent most of the trip gushing over Elvis Presley.
13.
Don Durant told her that he had been to a few of Presley's parties, and the two began dating.
14.
Don Durant appeared as the villain in a first season episode of Wanted: Dead or Alive.
15.
Don Durant wrote and sang the theme and did his own stunts.
16.
Don Durant signed a contract with another studio, but aside from a 1963 guest role on NBC's Laramie western series with John Smith and Robert Fuller as Slim Sherman and Jess Harper, respectively, few offers materialized.
17.
On Laramie, Don Durant was cast as Gandy Ross, a likable safecracker trying to go straight, in the episode "No Place to Run".
18.
Don Durant bought out his contract in 1964; and, because big bands had faded in the pop music fever, he subsequently retired from show business.
19.
In 1992, Don Durant contracted chronic lymphocytic leukemia and, thereafter, lymphoma.
20.
Don Durant soon died at his home in Monarch Beach, California.
21.
Don Durant was buried at Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona del Mar, California.