Cowboy

I was immediately intrigued with the rugged old guy driving the van. His deeply chiseled face looked like a road map of all the places he had been, cracks and crevices that held secrets and dreams and a whole lot of stories. His smile was wry and wide; it animated his tumbleweed eyebrows because when he lifted the corners of his mouth, his eyes smiled too. I suspected he was a bighearted rascal.

I met Dave Burleson while I was on a press junket for the upcoming film, Seven Days in Utopia. As Dave drove us from the film set back to the golf club, I listened to him chatter with his compadre, who was riding shotgun. Yeah, I was kind of eavesdropping, though it was a full van and they weren't talking in whispers. I asked him a question about what he did, and he started telling me about his career. He's been in 47 films. He was Dean Martin's stunt man, and hung out regularly with John Wayne, Kirk Douglas and Johnny Cash. He even reportedly got James Dean in trouble on the set of Giant.

"I dated plenty of starlets," he said, smiling mischievously.
"Like who?" I asked, skeptically.
"Ali McGraw, Cissy Spacek, Liz Taylor. It's all in here…"

He pulled out some carefully copied articles that had been written about him over the years. He let me make copies of them in the clubhouse office, and after reading them I learned that he was not just an actor, he was a cowboy too. He grew up raising quarter horses and actually raced horses for a living. One article mentioned that he was working on a tell-all memoir entitled, Texas Stud on Location. Though I didn't get to ask him about it, I'm pretty sure that title sums up his assessment of his career and his life. And somehow that makes me smile.

Dave's most recent project is a "cowboy sci-fi" movie entitled Thunder Riders. He produced and starred in the film, and even used unpublished footage John Wayne shot before he died. He calls it an Old West/New West sci-fi saga. Though there were several celebrities around that day, I wasn't nearly as interested in them as I was Dave. I believe that some of the greatest stories around are sleeping deeply within those who never get to stand in the spotlight. I asked Dave if he'd let me take a few photos of him and he was more than happy to oblige. After about twenty shots I posed with him and asked a colleague to snap the picture. Sure enough, when she said "three" he pulled a fast one. I was right: he is a rascal.