The Virginian star Randy Boone, who was also a regular on It's a Man's World and Cimarron Strip, has passed away at the age of 83.
Boone, who rode his own horse and portrayed the singing and guitar-playing ranch hand Randy Benton on the long-running NBC series, breathed his last during last week.
Without sharing more details, his wife Lana told The Hollywood Reporter that the American actor and singer died on Thursday.
She neither revealed the moments of his final hours nor the cause of death or any further detail related to the actor’s passing.
The It's a Man's World regular starred in the NBC comedy-drama from 1962-63. He also played Stuart Whitman on the CBS Western Cimarron Strip during 1967-68. Both the series lasted for one season
The North Carolina native, meanwhile, joined The Virginian midway through its second season in February 1964.
He remained a part of the cast, including Doug McClure and James Drury, for 46 episodes through the end of the fourth season in April 1966 before his departure from the show.
The veteran actor shared earlier that he was advised to learn to ride a horse which would really help him in the growing world of TV Westerns, so he went ahead and bought a horse named Clyde and eventually became a skilled rider.
In addition to the fact that he was still under contract with Universal, his talent helped him land a role in The Virginian.
Boone even offered to let Universal use Clyde for free, as long as the studio would let him keep the horse on-site. The studio agreed. Her later shared that Clyde wasn’t exactly a polished Hollywood horse, which made it work
"He acted very much like a real horse, and I got a lot of fan mail about how he didn’t stand still," Boone says about his beloved pet.
