Beefcake Blunder Averted – Ty Hardin

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Sometimes it pays to use multiple websites when researching material for Bits and Pieces

So I remember reruns of Bronco and the chiseled star of that show. Seems that every episode he found some excuse to take his shirt off. Beefcake material, right? Not so fast – as I was assembling fodder to use in the write-up here, I came across this juicy tidbit:

“After his acting career faded away, Ty Hardin became a self-proclaimed “freedom fighter” in the 1970s, and led a radical right-wing group called The Arizona Patriots, an anti-Semitic/anti-immigrant/anti-black group with a penchant for stockpiling weapons and baiting public officials.

After a mid-’70s dispute with the IRS, Hardin opened a “tax protest” school called the Common Law Institute, which featured such materials as a “Patriot Handbook” containing “tested cases and methods to maintain good personal freedom.” In 1983 and 1984 he edited “The Arizona Patriot”, a monthly publication that consisted of diatribes against government officials, calls for “Christian patriots” to band together and reprints of articles from other anti-Semitic publications.

In 1986, following a two-year FBI undercover investigation, agents from the FBI and ATF raided an Arizona Patriot camp and confiscated a hoard of illegal weapons and publications from Aryan Nation groups and affiliates. Hardin left Arizona, and the group soon ceased to function.”

Therefore, no showcasing Ty Hardin. Ever.

Beefcake Tuesday – George Randolph Scott

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(1898 – 1987) Scott was raised in Charlotte, North Carolina. After service with the U.S. Army, he attended Georgia Institute of Technology but, after being injured playing football, transferred to the University of North Carolina.

He discovered acting and went to California, where he was hired to voice coach Gary Cooper for The Virginian (1929). Paramount offered him a contract where he met Cary Grant, another Paramount contract player, on the set of Hot Saturday (1932) and the pair soon moved in together.

Their on-and-off living arrangement would last until 1942.

Scott moved into leading roles at Paramount, but it was not until he began focusing on Westerns in the late 1940s that he reached his greatest stardom. He became one of the top box office stars of the 1950s and, in the Westerns of Budd Boetticher especially, an important figure. Following a critically acclaimed role in one of the classics of the genre, Ride the High Country (1962), Scott retired from films.

He died in 1987 and is buried in Charlotte, North Carolina.