Frank Ferguson
Encyclopedia
Frank Ferguson was an American character actor
with hundreds of appearances in both film
and television
. Perhaps his best known role was as the ranch
handyman, Gus Broeberg, on the CBS television series, My Friend Flicka
, based on a novel
of the same name. He appeared with Gene Evans
, Johnny Washbrook
, and Anita Louise
. At this time, Ferguson also portrayed the Calverton veterinarian
in the first several seasons of CBS's Lassie
.
Even before My Friend Flicka and Lassie, Ferguson appeared in five episodes as "Murdock" in the 1953-1954 ABC
sitcom, The Pride of the Family
, starring Paul Hartman
, Fay Wray
, Natalie Wood
, and Robert Hyatt.
Ferguson also played three different characters on The Andy Griffith Show
, two different characters on Petticoat Junction
, four different characters on Bonanza
, four different characters on Perry Mason
, and four different characters on Maverick
. He guest starred on other series, including The Rifleman
, NBC
's The Restless Gun
and Overland Trail
, ABC
's Target: The Corruptors!
, ABC's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
, twice on CBS's General Electric Theater
, hosted by Ronald W. Reagan, and twice in 1956 as Henry Murdock (a name similar to his character in The Pride of the Family) on the syndicated
western-themed crime drama Sheriff of Cochise
. He appeared on all three of Rod Cameron
's crime series, City Detective
, (1955), State Trooper
(1957) and COronado 9
(1960). He appeared too in 1963 in the final season of Leave it to Beaver
.
He also played the role of Eli Carson in the primetime serial Peyton Place
and reprised the role in the later daytime version Return to Peyton Place
.
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...
with hundreds of appearances in both film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
and television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
. Perhaps his best known role was as the ranch
Ranch
A ranch is an area of landscape, including various structures, given primarily to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool. The word most often applies to livestock-raising operations in the western United States and Canada, though...
handyman, Gus Broeberg, on the CBS television series, My Friend Flicka
My Friend Flicka (TV series)
My Friend Flicka is a 39-episode western television series set at the fictitious Goose Bar Ranch in Wyoming at the turn of the 20th century. The program was filmed in color but initially aired in black and white on CBS at 7:30 p.m. Fridays from February 10, 1956, to February 1, 1957. It was a...
, based on a novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
of the same name. He appeared with Gene Evans
Gene Evans
Gene Evans was an American actor.He was born in Holbrook, Arizona, but reared in Colton, California. His acting career began while he was serving in World War II. He performed with a theatrical troupe of GIs in Europe. Evans made his film debut in 1947 and appeared in dozens of movies and...
, Johnny Washbrook
Johnny Washbrook
John "Johnny" Washbrook is a former child actor best known for his role as 12-year-old Ken McLaughlin on the western television series My Friend Flicka, originally broadcast from 1956-1957 on CBS.-My Friend Flicka:...
, and Anita Louise
Anita Louise
-Life and career:Born Anita Louise Fremault in New York, New York, she made her acting debut on Broadway at the age of six, and within a year was appearing regularly in Hollywood films...
. At this time, Ferguson also portrayed the Calverton veterinarian
Veterinarian
A veterinary physician, colloquially called a vet, shortened from veterinarian or veterinary surgeon , is a professional who treats disease, disorder and injury in animals....
in the first several seasons of CBS's Lassie
Lassie (1954 TV series)
Lassie is an American television series that follows the adventures of a female Rough Collie named Lassie and her companions, human and animal. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax and was televised from September 12, 1954, to March 24, 1973...
.
Even before My Friend Flicka and Lassie, Ferguson appeared in five episodes as "Murdock" in the 1953-1954 ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
sitcom, The Pride of the Family
The Pride of the Family
The Pride of the Family was a half-hour situation comedy starring Paul Hartman, Fay Wray, Natalie Wood, and Robert Hyatt, which aired for forty episodes on ABC in the 1953–1954 season....
, starring Paul Hartman
Paul Hartman
Paul Hartman was an American dancer, stage performer and television character actor.-Biography:Born in San Francisco, California, Hartman, like Fred Astaire, began performing as a dancer with his sister...
, Fay Wray
Fay Wray
Fay Wray was a Canadian-American actress most noted for playing the female lead in King Kong...
, Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood
Natalie Wood, born Natalia Nikolaevna Zacharenko was an American film and television actress. After first working in films as a child, Wood became a successful Hollywood star as a young adult, receiving three Academy Award nominations before she was 25 years old.Wood began acting in movies at the...
, and Robert Hyatt.
Ferguson also played three different characters on The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show
The Andy Griffith Show is an American sitcom first televised by CBS between October 3, 1960, and April 1, 1968. Andy Griffith portrays a widowed sheriff in the fictional small community of Mayberry, North Carolina...
, two different characters on Petticoat Junction
Petticoat Junction
Petticoat Junction is an American situation comedy produced by Filmways which originally aired on CBS from 1963 to 1970. The series is one of three interrelated shows about rural characters created by Paul Henning; the others are The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres.The setting for the series...
, four different characters on Bonanza
Bonanza
Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...
, four different characters on Perry Mason
Perry Mason (TV series)
Perry Mason is an American legal drama produced by Paisano Productions that ran from September 1957 to May 1966 on CBS. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a fictional Los Angeles defense attorney who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner...
, and four different characters on Maverick
Maverick (TV series)
Maverick is a western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on ABC and stars James Garner as Bret Maverick, a cagey, articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother...
. He guest starred on other series, including The Rifleman
The Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
's The Restless Gun
The Restless Gun
The Restless Gun is a western television series that appeared on NBC between 1957 and 1959, with John Payne in the role of Vint Bonner, a wandering cowboy in the era after the American Civil War. A skilled gunfighter, Bonner is an idealistic person who prefers peaceful resolutions of conflict...
and Overland Trail
Overland Trail (TV series)
Overland Trail is a short-lived American Western series which aired on NBC from February 7 to June 6, 1960. The series starred William Bendix and Doug McClure,-Synopsis:...
, ABC
American Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
's Target: The Corruptors!
Target: The Corruptors!
Target: The Corruptors! is a 35-episode crime drama starring Stephen McNally as newspaper reporter Paul Marino, which aired on ABC from September 29, 1961 to June 8, 1962. The character Jack Flood, Marino's undercover agent, was portrayed by Robert Harland...
, ABC's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (TV series)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a 1962-1963 ABC sitcom starring Fess Parker as Eugene Smith, an honest but unsophisticated U.S. senator from an unidentified small-populated state. The half-hour program is based on the 1939 Frank Capra film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring James Stewart in...
, twice on CBS's General Electric Theater
General Electric Theater
General Electric Theater is an American anthology series hosted by Ronald W. Reagan that was broadcast on CBS radio and television. The series was sponsored by General Electric's Department of Public Relations.-Radio:...
, hosted by Ronald W. Reagan, and twice in 1956 as Henry Murdock (a name similar to his character in The Pride of the Family) on the syndicated
Television syndication
In broadcasting, syndication is the sale of the right to broadcast radio shows and television shows by multiple radio stations and television stations, without going through a broadcast network, though the process of syndication may conjure up structures like those of a network itself, by its very...
western-themed crime drama Sheriff of Cochise
Sheriff of Cochise
Sheriff of Cochise , renamed U.S. Marshal , is a 58-episode syndicated western-themed crime drama set in Arizona and starring John Bromfield as law enforcement officer Frank Morgan. In the first two seasons, Morgan was sheriff of Cochise County...
. He appeared on all three of Rod Cameron
Rod Cameron
Rod Cameron was a Canadian-born movie actor whose career extended from the 1930s to the 1970s. He appeared in horror, war, action and science fiction movies, but is best remembered for his many Westerns....
's crime series, City Detective
City Detective (TV series)
City Detective is a half-hour syndicated crime drama starring Rod Cameron as 43-year-old Bart Grant, a tough 1950s New York City police lieutenant. The first of three consecutive Rod Cameron series, City Detective aired between January 1, 1953 and May 10, 1955...
, (1955), State Trooper
State Trooper (TV series)
State Trooper is a half-hour television crime drama set in the 1950s American West, starring Rod Cameron as Rod Blake, an officer of the Nevada State Troopers. The series aired 104 episodes in syndication from September 25, 1956, to June 25, 1959...
(1957) and COronado 9
COronado 9
Coronado 9 is a syndicated crime drama set in San Diego, California, starring Rod Cameron as Dan Adams, a former United States Navy intelligence officer turned private detective. Coronado 9 is Adams's address; the numeral 9 on a rock shown near his front door in the opening credits denotes the...
(1960). He appeared too in 1963 in the final season of Leave it to Beaver
Leave It to Beaver
Leave It to Beaver is an American television situation comedy about an inquisitive but often naïve boy named Theodore "The Beaver" Cleaver and his adventures at home, in school, and around his suburban neighborhood...
.
He also played the role of Eli Carson in the primetime serial Peyton Place
Peyton Place (TV series)
Peyton Place is an American prime-time soap opera which aired on ABC in half-hour episodes from September 15, 1964 to June 2, 1969.Based upon the 1956 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious, the series was preceded by a 1957 film adaptation. A total of 514 episodes were broadcast, in...
and reprised the role in the later daytime version Return to Peyton Place
Return to Peyton Place (TV series)
Return to Peyton Place is an American daytime soap opera which aired on NBC from April 3, 1972 to January 4, 1974. The series was a spin-off of the primetime drama series Peyton Place rather than an adaptation of the 1959 novel of the same name by Grace Metalious.The storylines from the daytime...
.