Image: Wikimedia CommonsDenver Pyle
American actor (1920-1997)
- Born May 11, 1920
- 5 movies
Denver Pyle (11 May 1920 to 25 December 1997) was an American actor and director from Bethune, Colorado, whose weathered face and drawl made him a fixture of westerns and rural comedy for four decades. Television audiences knew him as the hill patriarch Briscoe Darling on The Andy Griffith Show, Doris Day's father on The Doris Day Show, Mad Jack in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams and, most of all, Uncle Jesse on The Dukes of Hazzard (1979 to 1985). On film his best-remembered role is the Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
Denver Pyle appears in 5 films in The Rerun, from 1955 to 1968. Most of that work is in western, biography and war. Frequent collaborators in The Rerun: Arthur Penn (2), John Wayne (2).
Known for
- The Dukes of Hazzard (1979), Jesse Duke. Played Jesse Duke on the series from 1979 to 1985.
- Bonnie and Clyde (1967), Frank Hamer. His most memorable film role, the Texas Ranger who pursues the duo.
- The Andy Griffith Show, Briscoe Darling. Played Briscoe Darling in several episodes.
- The Alamo (1960). Part of the cast of the 1960 film.
Career
Pyle drifted through drumming, oil fields and wartime work as a riveter before a stage role led him to study acting and to bit parts in films from 1947. His career settled after he played the outlaw Ben Thompson on The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp in 1955, and through the 1950s and 1960s he guested across nearly every western on the dial, including Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel and Bonanza. John Ford used him in The Horse Soldiers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and he had a supporting part in John Wayne’s The Alamo.
The Darling family’s visits to Mayberry gave him a comic persona he would refine for years, and Bonnie and Clyde gave him a hard-edged one: the lawman humiliated by the gang who finally ends them. As Jesse Duke, the moonshining uncle of Bo and Luke, he anchored a CBS ratings hit of the early 1980s.
Where to start
- Bonnie and Clyde (1967): Arthur Penn’s landmark crime film, with Pyle as its implacable avenger.
- The Alamo (1960): Wayne’s sprawling historical western, for a supporting turn among the defenders.
- The Dukes of Hazzard (1979): the role most viewers still picture.
Movies
Quick answers
- What movies and TV shows has Denver Pyle been in?
- Denver Pyle appears in Bandolero! (1968), Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Alamo (1960), The Left Handed Gun (1958) and To Hell and Back (1955) on The Remote.
- When was Denver Pyle born?
- Denver Pyle was born on 11 May 1920.
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