Actor Takes a Healthy Stance

Actor Takes a Healthy Stance. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

I recently attended the Santa Clarita, California Cowboy Festival on the lot of the old Melody Ranch Studios. It was easy to see in my mind all my old favorite western actors strolling down the streets. We walked into one of the stores and there was actually one of my favorites, actor Denny Miller who we all remember as Duke Shannon on Wagon Train. Miller says he enjoyed doing westerns.

MILLER: You don’t have to keep clean and your hair combed but for other reasons. I’m not a buff of the history of our western movement but I did enough to get a taste of it and it’s really a fun job to have. If I’d have had my druthers I’d have only done comedy. I love making people laugh or at least helping them to.

Miller did not want to be an actor. He would like to have played basketball at UCLA and follow in his father’s footsteps as a physical education instructor but due to a happy accident he wound being “discovered” quite by accident.

MILLER: My biggest problem was going back to the fraternity house at UCLA and explaining to the guys that were majoring in Theater Arts how a P.E. major had a current contract. It happened. It’s not unusual in Hollywood, a happy accident. Life is what happens to you when you are on your way to do something else.

He is also well remembered as the Tarzan of the late 50’s. He was the picture of good health and during those times in the acting business when he was between jobs, he worked as a personal trainer. He has written a book that he calls a warning to parents.

MILLER: It’s called “Toxic Waist, w-a-i-s-t. ? Get to Know Sweat.” In other words, get off your fanny and exercise. There’s an epidemic of diabetes and kids are getting diabetes 2 which up until just recently was a grown ups disease because mainly they don’t exercise and they eat all the wrong things.

In addition he has written an autobiography about his experiences in Hollywood. Both are available on his website, www.denny-miller.com.

MILLER: I hear Buck Taylor accept at the Cowboy Hall of Fame, Buck received his father’s entry into the Hall of Fame and he called his father – “he’s not a character actor, he was an actor with character,” and I like that line. I’d like to think that I approached that status anyway.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.