Morgan Woodward

Morgan Woodward (born 16 September 1925 in Fort Worth, Texas) is an American actor.

He is probably best known for his recurring role in Dallas as "Punk" Anderson, but he has many television guest appearances to his name in shows such as Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Wagon Train, Rawhide, The Big Valley, Branded, The Virginian, The High Chaparral, Star Trek [For which he guest-starred as two different characters in two different episodes.] , McMillan and Wife, Kung Fu, The Waltons, Police Woman, Starsky and Hutch, The Incredible Hulk, CHiPs, Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, The A-Team, Knight Rider, Hill Street Blues, Matt Houston, T.J. Hooker, Scarecrow and Mrs. King, Murder, She Wrote, The X-Files and Millennium.

Film credits include: Cool Hand Luke, The Wild Country, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and Battle Beyond the Stars.

Woodward is notable for having starred in two different episodes of the original series of Star Trek as two different characters. In the first-season episode Dagger of the Mind Woodward plays Dr. Simon Van Gelder, an attending physician at a hospital for the criminally insane. After discovering that the director of the facility is engaged in illegal experimentation Van Gelder himself becomes a victim of these experiments and is confined as one of the patients. Escaping the facility to the orbiting Enterprise the violent and incoherent Van Gelder eventually recovers enough to be able to divulge the nefarious goings-on at the hospital.

In the second-season episode The Omega Glory, Woodward portrays Captain Ron Tracey, master of the starship Exeter, a sister ship to the Enterprise. Convinced that he is permanently marooned on an unfamiliar planet Tracey chooses to abandon his duty as a Starfleet officer and in essence "goes native," allying himself with some of the planet's natural inhabitants in their war against their neighbors. Discovered by Captain Kirk, Tracey is eventually defeated and taken into custody for his violation of orders.

One of Woodward's longest TV roles was as the deputy/sidekick "Shotgun" Gibbs in 1955-1961 TV series "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp." On that series, Woodward played a tall, cantankerous, shotgun-toting backwoodsman who eventually became the trusted deputy of lawman Wyatt Earp in his days as a Kansas lawman. Though often overshadowed by the cool menace of Douglas Fowley's Doc Holliday, Woodward portrayed Gibbs as a solid, trustworthy, and more pragmatic partner to Earp, making Gibbs a character who, though ostensibly rough around the edges, would gradually come to share many of the qualities demonstrated over the years by another trusted TV deputy, Ken Curtis' world-weary Festus Haggen on Gunsmoke.

Trivia

Woodward is a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington. Along with his brothers he has received recognition as a Distinguished Alumni of the University. He is also a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity.

External links

• Morgan Woodward at IMDb
• Morgan Woodward at Memory Alpha