Biography: Considering the kind of scruffy, backwoods, uneducated, Deep-South hillbillly types he played, many people would not find it hard to believe that Ken Curtis was born and raised in Las Animas Colorado, the son of a deputy sheriff. What they would find hard to believe is that he began his show business career as a singer in the big-band era, and was a vocalist in the legendary Tommy Dorsey orchestra ... show all Considering the kind of scruffy, backwoods, uneducated, Deep-South hillbillly types he played, many people would not find it hard to believe that Ken Curtis was born and raised in Las Animas Colorado, the son of a deputy sheriff. What they would find hard to believe is that he began his show business career as a singer in the big-band era, and was a vocalist in the legendary Tommy Dorsey orchestra. He entered films in the late 1940s at the tail end of the singing cowboy phase in a series of low-budget Columbia westerns. When that genre died out he turned to straight dramatic and comedy parts, and became a regular in the films of director John Ford . He ventured into film production in the 1950s with two extremely low-budget monster films, "The Killer Shrews (1959)" and "The Giant Gila Monster (1959)", but he is best known for his long-running role as Festus Hagen, the scrofulous, cantankerous deputy in the TV series "Gunsmoke" (1955)". hide |
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