Randy Boone, who played the singing and guitar-playing rancher on long-running NBC Western series The Virginian, has died at the age of 83, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
His wife Lana Boone told THR that he died on Thursday, August 28. No other details were given.
Boone was one of the remaining few cast members of The Virginian who were still alive. With his death, Gary Clarke, Roberta Shore and Don Quine are the only major recurring stars who are still with us. Main cast members Doug McClure and James Drury died in 1995 and 2020, respectively.
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In the 2006 Paul Green book A History of Television’s The Virginian, 1962-1971, Boone talked about how his mother wanted him to stick with college, but his “heart wasn’t in it,” so he eventually hitchhiked to California and the rest is history.
Boone was a native of North Carolina before he broke into show business on the 1960s NBC comedy It’s a Man’s World. That show was cancelled after one season, but Boone quickly landed his role on The Virginian and starred on that show for 70 episodes. After he left The Virginian, Boone starred on the CBS Western series Cimarron Strip alongside Stuart Whitman, Percy Herbert and Jill Townsend.
In A History of Television’s The Virginian, Boone talked about how his horse on the show was his real-life horse named Clyde, and because he wasn’t trained for movies or TV, Clyde definitely had a mind of his own, much to the fans’ delight.
“He acted very much like a real horse, and I got a lot of fan mail about how he didn’t stand still. He was spirited,” — Randy Boone
A History of Television’s The Virginian
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“He acted very much like a real horse, and I got a lot of fan mail about how he didn’t stand still. He was spirited,” said Boone, who was hired largely because of his experience with horses and because he could sing and play the guitar. Fans liked Boone’s singing rancher character so much that the show released an album of songs from the show performed by Boone and co-star Shore in 1965. But even that wasn’t enough to keep him on the show.
Later, after several producer changes, Boone was let go from the show, which he didn’t think was the right move.
“I was let go…I was told that [producer Frank Price] thought I was window dressing and wasn’t needed on the show, but I feel that I was needed as much as anybody,” said Boone in the book. “I think a show suffers when you make big changes in a show, and you lose the actors that caused the people to fall in love with the show. When they go, it suffers. But the time The Virginian had turned over to Charles Bickford, I was working over at CBS in a series with Stuart Whitman called Cimarron Strip. That was fabulous.”
Boone also appeared on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone, The Fugitive, Bonanza, Lassie, Emergency!, Gunsmoke, Kung Fu and Highway to Heaven in one-off roles. According to THR, he left acting in the late 1980s and worked in construction until he retired.
This story was originally reported by Parade on Sep 1, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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