Biography for
James Ellison More at IMDbPro »

Date of Birth

4 May 1910, Guthrie Center, Iowa, USA

Date of Death

23 December 1993, Montecito, California, USA (broken neck as result of a fall)

Birth Name

James Ellison Smith

Height

6' 2" (1.88 m)

Mini Biography

Handsome, dark-haired leading man and then supporting player in Hollywood for two decades from 1932.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Bill Takacs

Mini Biography

American light leading man, primarily of Westerns. Born in Guthrie Center, Iowa, in 1910, Ellison (born James Ellison Smith) grew up on a ranch in Valier, Montana. There he learned the skills that would stand him in good stead as a movie cowboy. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was a young man, and it was there that he first became interested in the theatre. He studied at the Pasadena Community Playhouse briefly, traveled to New York (and by some accounts played some minor roles in productions of the visiting Moscow Art Theatre, probably as a supernumerary), then returned to California where he was spotted by a Warner Bros. talent scout at a production of the Beverly Hills Little Theatre. He played a number of bit parts for Warners and MGM before landing the plum part of Hopalong Cassidy's sidekick Johnny Nelson in 1935. Ellison played Nelson for eight films before being plucked by Cecil B. DeMille for the role of Buffalo Bill Cody in De Mille's epic Western The Plainsman (1936) opposite Gary Cooper. De Mille reportedly hated Ellison's performance, and it is certain that he never had quite so good a part in quite so good a film, thereafter. Following a number of romantic leads in lesser films, Ellison returned to the B-Western, this time as the lead (along with his Hopalong replacement Russell Hayden) in a series featuring two cowhands named Lucky (Hayden) and Shamrock (Ellison). With the demise of the B-Western in the early 1950s, Ellison retired from movies and became a successful real estate broker. He died in 1993 as the result of a fall in which he broke his neck, at the age of 83.

IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver

Spouse

Gertrude Durkin	(1937 - 1970) (her death) 2 children
Shelly Keats	(? - 23 December 1993) (his death)

Trivia

Son Durk, daughter Trudy (True)

Best remembered as Buffalo Bill, opposite Gary Cooper's Wild Bill Hickok and Jean Arthur's Calamity Jane, in Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman (1936).

In the latter part of his career he owned a very successful home construction business, from which he made far more money than he did by acting. He built many expensive homes in Beverly Hills, and Ellison Drive in that city is named after him.

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