Hill Over Dale

Dale Robertson, the poor man’s Ben Johnson, has died of lung cancer at the age of 89. Well known on the Western series and movies that filled screens large and small in the 1950s and 1960s, Robertson starred in Tales of Wells Fargo, focusing on protecting stagecoaches and trains from criminals and not cards getting stuck in ATMs, and in Iron Horse as a card player who won a railroad, as often happens with public trusts. On Dallas, he played an old friend of Jock’s who put the moves on Miss Ellie after she had Jock declared legally dead, which led to the reading of his will, which pitted brother against brother for control of Ewing Oil for the umpteenth time, until J.R. chased him off. As JJ Starbuck, he was a vital part of criminal justice in 1980s TV, where beleaguered/corrupt/inept police were unable to solve crimes without the help of a cagey old billionaire cowboy, or a mystery writer, or a dwarf toymaker, or a mystery man and a talking car, or military prisoners on the lam, or master ninjas, or handsome PIs, or robot-aided helicopter tour operators, or wizened southern lawyers, or a shape-shifting NYU professor, or a former government operative, or a hologram come to life.