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- Actor Robert Fuller, known for classic TV Westerns, will be a guest at the Flashback Film & TV Festival in Olive Branch.
- Fuller starred in popular 1950s and ’60s shows including “Laramie” and “Wagon Train.”
The “granny groupies” will be in the Memphis area this week by the dozens.
The lure is one man. He is a “heartthrob” and a “dreamboat,” and on July 29 he will celebrate his 93rd birthday, God willing.
The man is television cowboy Robert Fuller, the star of such hit programs of the 1950s and ‘60s as “Laramie” and “Wagon Train,” from the era when the television landscape was dominated by sagebrush and chaparral. (In the 1970s, Fuller traded his six-gun for a stethoscope, to be a doctor on “Emergency!”)
A rugged actor who still throws punches on such rerun-oriented channels as MeTV and the Grit network, Fuller may no longer be a household name, but his appeal remains undiminished for the hundreds of women worldwide who plan their vacations around his appearances at such conventions as the Flashback Film & TV Festival, set for July 16-18 at the Whispering Woods Hotel & Conference Center in Olive Branch.
“First of all, he’s adorable, and second, he’s got a fast gun,” said Christi Kistler, 58, of Burlington, North Carolina, who is a relative newcomer to the ranks of the infatuated: She did not fall for Fuller until she discovered “Laramie” on the Starz Encore Westerns channel in 2016.
Meanwhile, Diana Haines of Taneytown, Maryland, has been a Fuller fan since “Laramie” began its four-season run on NBC in 1959.
“I grew up at a time when girls were fawning over Elvis or the Beatles, but uh-uh, I had my cowboy, and I was convinced I was gonna marry that man,” said Haines, 75. “I was gonna grow up, and he was gonna wait for me.”
Kistler said the Flashback festival and others like it are similar to class or family reunions, as Fuller fans reconnect from around the globe. “Sally comes in from Australia every year,” she explained. “Atsuko comes from Japan, Bel comes in from Canada. Luisa is from Italy. There’s Pam from Florida, Karen from New York, Dee from Georgia…”
“They’re just kind of granny groupies, I don’t know another way to put it,” said Ray Nielsen, longtime director of the nonprofit Flashback fest, a Greater Memphis tradition that began in 1972 with the first “Western Film Festival” at The Peabody.
‘Huge amount of affection’ for Robert Fuller
Originally, the festival — which features film screenings, panel discussions, autograph sessions, memorabilia rooms and more — focused on B-Westerns. Its celebrity guests were “singing cowboys” and other “horse opera” heroes, including Sunset Carson, Lash LaRue and Tex Ritter. The vast majority of the festival’s attendees were men, Nielsen said.
As the old-school stars of movie “oaters” began to die off, the festival expanded its scope beyond Westerns to focus on classic Hollywood and the Golden Age of Television in general. Then, in the 2000s, the festival largely returned to its cowboy roots, but with a new emphasis on the small screen and the era when Westerns ruled the Nielsen ratings. (During the 1958-1959 season, for example, seven of the 10 highest-rated series were Westerns, including the top four: “Gunsmoke,” “Wagon Train,” “Have Gun – Will Travel” and “The Rifleman.”)
“And that’s when our audience changed completely, 180 degrees,” Nielsen said. “Ever since then, it’s been overwhelmingly — overwhelmingly — female attendees.”
The women came to see such craggy but still handsome Western stars as James Drury (“The Virginian”), James Stacy (“Lancer”), Clint Walker (“Cheyenne”), Will Hutchins (“Sugarfoot”), Ty Hardin (“Bronco”) and Fuller, who in their heydays were showcased in fan magazines alongside pop singers and matinee idols.
Now, Fuller — always a top draw, for men and women fans — is “the last man standing, basically,” Nielsen said. (The other aforementioned actors passed away during the past decade.)
If the fans admire the courage and steadfastness of Fuller’s heroes in “Laramie” and “Wagon Train,” they also consider him a “dreamboat” or “hunk,” Nielsen said.
“Robert Fuller was my heartthrob,” confirmed Haines, a veterinary pathologist. “For me, initially, he was a sexy guy. Now I love him as a brother, or agape — a pure love.”
The fans “have a huge amount of affection for him,” said Tony Gill, 74, of Luton, England, who runs the Robert Fuller Fandom website (roberfuller.info) and the Fuller fan club, which now numbers “just shy of 7,000 people,” he said.
Many Fuller devotees are “linked to the idea and the memory of those shows,” Gill said. “They’ve grown up together.” Most have a particular yen for Jess Harper, the sometimes hot-headed former drifter played by Fuller on “Laramie.” “He was a bit of a bad boy but a good guy,” Gill said. “He always fought for the underdog.”
“A lot of ‘Laramie’ was really like a morality play, because good always triumphed,” Haines said. “He had to go through difficulties, emotional and physical, but he always prevailed.”
‘This is a very serious fandom’
Fuller is a fixture at the Memphis-area festival. He’s been a guest almost every year since 2009, when the convention was known as the Memphis Film Festival. (The name eventually was changed to avoid confusion with the Indie Memphis Film Festival, devoted to new cinema; “MidSouth Nostalgia Festival” held sway for a while, with the “Flashback” brand being inaugurated this year.)
“This is a very serious fandom,” said Fuller, 92, in a phone interview from the ranch in Gainesville, Texas, he shares with his wife, actress Jennifer Savidge (“St. Elsewhere”), who also will be a guest at the festival. “We have people from all over the world come to this thing, close to 250 or 300 from my fan club. We all take care of each other.”
A construction project administrator, Kistler said she’s been to every Memphis-area festival since 2017. That’s true for Haines, too, but Haines added that she’s only missed one public appearance by Fuller anywhere in America since she discovered the existence of Fuller fan culture in 2013.
No wonder Fuller describes the upcoming festival as a “reunion.” And this year, he’ll reunite with not just his fans but with several of his “Emergency!” and “Laramie” co-stars.
“I’m going to see people I haven’t seen in a long time,” he said, noting that he has worked professionally with each of this year’s other celebrity guests, including 91-year-old Ruta Lee, star of such musicals as “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers”; “Adam-12” star Kent McCord; and Patrick Wayne, actor son of John Wayne, to name a few.
Although Fuller is known as a “man’s man” and “a true cowboy” (in Haines’ descriptions), he’s no accidental actor. He took his craft seriously. After his Army service during the Korean War, he studied acting with Richard Boone (a teacher as well as a TV and movie star) and with the famed New York acting coach Sanford Meisner, whose “Meisner technique” offered an alternative to the more famous “Method” style.
A dancer, he appeared in musical scenes with Marilyn Monroe in Howard Hawks’ “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953). A stuntman, he doubled for such stars as Steve McQueen and Jerry Lewis (“Actually, Jerry’s pretty handy, he did most everything himself,” said Fuller, who worked with Lewis on “The Delicate Delinquent”). Eventually he earned large roles, first in drive-in movies (“The Brain from Planet Arous”) and then on television.
Fuller retired about 20 years ago, but he remains active. In addition to meeting fans, he fishes, he boats, he rides horses. Asked the secret to his health and longevity, he offers a practiced answer: “Cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women.” Less jocularly, he adds: “I don’t know what the heck it is. I guess it’s the genes. I’m just one of the lucky ones — 92, and still foolin’ ’em.”
His fans feel thrilled, not fooled. Haines said after the first time she met Fuller, she texted her husband, Richard. “I was floating on air,” she said. “I texted, ‘OMG I have died and gone to heaven, I just got a hug from Robert Fuller.’ I said, ‘Honey, I’ve loved you for 30 years, but I’ve loved him for over 50.’ And Richard texted back, ‘No more hugs.’”
John Beifuss is an entertainment writer at The Commercial Appeal. Contact him at [email protected].
Flashback Film & TV Festival
July 16-18, Whispering Woods Hotel & Conference Center, 7300 Hacks Cross Road in Olive Branch.
Features an exhibit of TV Western costumes; movie and television episodes; celebrity panel discussions; meet-and-greet autograph sessions; a “dealers’ room” with toys, movies, vintage posters, and other memorabilia for sale; and more.
Celebrity guests include Robert Fuller (“Laramie”); Jennifer Savidge (“St. Elsewhere”); Ruta Lee (“Witness for the Prosecution”); Kent McCord (“Adam-12”); Mike Stoker (“Emergency!”); Patrick Wayne (“Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger”); Gary Clarke (“The Virginian”); Robert Crawford Jr. (“Laramie”); and Dennis Holmes (“Laramie”).
Mission statement: “Our festival is committed to providing a place where fans can meet and hear from the actors, directors, stunt people and more who have provided us with years of enjoyment through movies and television.”
For tickets and more information, visit flashbackfilmandtvfestival.com.
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