Actor: Ward Bond

Ward Bond appeared in more than two hundred films, many of them for John Ford, having met the director when he and John Wayne were both playing college football and were cast as extras.

The Searchers, Stagecoach, It’s a Wonderful Life and The Maltese Falcon all use the same quality: a large, blunt, entirely credible ordinary man.

He was a prominent and aggressive figure in the anti-communist Motion Picture Alliance during the blacklist period, which several colleagues never forgave.

Wagon Train gave him a television lead in the last years of his life, and he died in 1960 while it was running.