John Bromfield

Publish date: 2024-08-20

Actor

John Bromfield, known for his roles in the 1950s series “The Sheriff of Cochise” and “U.S. Marshal,” died Sept. 18 of kidney failure in Palm Desert, Calif. He was 83.

On camera for only a dozen years, the actor hit his peak portraying lawman Frank Morgan from 1956 to 1960. For the first two years, Morgan was “The Sheriff of Cochise” County, Ariz.; in 1958, the character was promoted to U.S. marshal, with the series title echoing his new rank.

Actor and songwriter Stan Jones, who wrote the western classic “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” created the show and played Bromfield’s top deputy for the first two years. The show was more of an Arizonan version of “Highway Patrol” than a traditional Western, with frequent car chases and fistfights.

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Shortly after the series ended in 1960, Bromfield left acting to produce sports shows and to fish off Newport Beach.

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Born Farron Bromfield in South Bend, Ind., he worked as a commercial fisherman off Santa Monica and started acting in summer stock at the La Jolla Playhouse. Bromfield made his debut in the 1948 documentary “Harpoon,” in which he twice harpooned a whale, and the same year earned his first feature film credit as a detective in “Sorry, Wrong Number,” starring Barbara Stanwyck and Burt Lancaster.

The next year, he appeared in “Rope of Sand,” again starring Lancaster and a young French beauty named Corinne Calvet.

Bromfield soon married Calvet and, until their divorce five years later, they were one of Hollywood’s much-photographed couples.

In an era when looks often dictated casting, Bromfield appeared in a score of films, portraying buff young gunslingers, military men and even a bathing suit-clad victim in the horror flick “Revenge of the Creature.”

He was also costumed in a bathing suit for the 1953 Cypress Gardens aquatic romp “Easy to Love,” starring Esther Williams.

Bromfield honed his Western persona in early television appearances on “The Ford Television Theatre” and the series “Frontier.”

He is survived by his wife Mary.

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