Monday, September 12, 2011

Burt Reynolds-Navajo Joe


As westerns faded on television in the early sixties, the thing to do for many cowboy actors seemed to be to visit Italy and become an international star. Worked for Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef and, on a lesser scale, quite a few others. Thus actor Burt Reynolds, after finishing his stint on GUNSMOKE, ended up in the lead role of DJANGO director Sergio Corbucci's NAVAJO JOE.
Soon enough, though, Burt was back in Hollywood starring in a short-lived cop show called HAWK. He worked regularly and often gave good, earnest performances on TV and in films but it wasn't until he showed his sense of humor by posing for a nude centerfold in COSMOPOLITAN in the early seventies that the general public really noticed him. With a combination of witty talk show appearances and good-ol' boy action comedies, he rose to become the most popular star of the late seventies and early eighties.



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