John Smith (actor)

John Smith (born Robert Errol Van Orden; March 6, 1931 – January 25, 1995) was an American actor primarily appearing in westerns and was considered the ideal cowboy. He had his leading roles in two NBC western television series, Cimarron City and Laramie.

A descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch governor of New Netherland in the 17th century, Smith was born in Los Angeles, California, to Errol and Margaret Van Orden.

Smith graduated from Susan Miller Dorsey High School in Los Angeles and enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles. He sang with a dance band and played football and basketball and engaged in gymnastics during his school years.

In the early 1940s, Smith joined the Robert Mitchell Boys Choir and appeared in several films, including Bing Crosby's Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's, as an uncredited choir member.

By 1950, he was working as a messenger for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and in 1952, the studio cast him as James Stewart's brother in Carbine Williams, although the part was uncredited. He was renamed by his agent Henry Willson in contrast to the more exciting names of Willson's other clients as he was "the only John Smith in the business".

In 1954, Smith appeared as the newlywed Milo Buck, opposite Karen Sharpe as Nell Buck, in the Academy Award-winning airplane disaster film, The High and the Mighty, starring and produced by John Wayne.

In 1955, Smith played the part of James Earp, older brother of Wyatt Earp in the film Wichita, starring Joel McCrea and Vera Miles. That same year, he played the part of Willie McGill or the "Colfax Kid" in the episode "Paper Gunman" of NBC's anthology series Frontier, hosted and narrated by Walter Coy.

Smith guest-starred in 1955 in the role of John Sontag in the syndicated television series Stories of the Century, the first western series to win an Emmy Award. The episode is entitled "Sontag and Evans," referring to Sontag's older partner in crime, Chris Evans, played by Morris Ankrum. Sontag and Evans turn to crime to fight the encroachment of the Southern Pacific Railroad.