Robert Fuller (born July 29, 1933) is an American horse rancher and retired actor.

In his five decades of television, Fuller became known for his deep, raspy voice and was familiar to television viewers throughout the 1960s and 70s from his co-starring roles as Jess Harper and Cooper Smith on the popular 1960s western series Laramie and Wagon Train, and was also well known for his role as Dr. Kelly Brackett in the 1970s medical drama Emergency!.

Biography

Fuller is an accomplished singer and did several "bandstand" gigs with Bill Aken's Los Nomadas rock group at holiday festivities in Whiskey Flats, California. While acting as grand marshal for the local Memorial Day parade, he performed a vocal rendition of the 1950s song "Caribbean" singing the same verse over and over. (He later told the band that he only knew the first verse of the song.) In 1967, he had recorded an LP in Munich, Germany. Most of the songs were recorded in German, including "Ein Einsamer Cowboy" or "Lonesome Cowboy", "Adios Mexicana" or "Goodbye Mexican Girl", "Uberall Auf Der Welt" or "All Over the World", "Sind Wie Blumen" or "Girls Are Like Flowers". Whether the album was successful in Germany is unknown.

By the 1990s, Fuller had largely retired from the film business. Since May 19, 2001, he has been married to actress Jennifer Savidge, best known for her role on NBC's St. Elsewhere series. Through Savidge, Fuller is also very good friends with her acting coach, veteran producer and actor Norman Lloyd, who played Dr. Daniel Auschlander. Formerly, Fuller was married for twenty-two years to Patricia Lee Lyon, with whom he has three children. The two divorced in 1984.

Since March 18, 1990, Fuller, along with James Drury, has been on the celebrity panels of the annual Festival of the West, a public/private party where die-hard fans question about his roles on Laramie, Wagon Train, and other westerns. He also tells the story about his being a cowboy. Included at his party, are country-western dancing, lunch, and dinner.

From October 9–11, 1998, Fuller was reunited once again with the rest of the surviving Emergency! cast, at the Emergency! Convention '98, which took place at the Burbank Airport Hilton in Burbank, California. All of the main actors attended except for Julie London, who had a stroke in 1995 and died in 2000. Bobby Troup attended just four months before his death. Fuller and the rest of the stars/crew answered fans' questions and remembered the times during which their cast-mates got along so well.

On March 10, 2010, Fuller presented to James Drury the "Cowboy Spirit Award" at the Festival of the West. He also paid tribute to John Smith, who died fifteen years earlier on January 25, 1995, of cirrhosis of the liver and heart problems. In the tribute, he recounted many details about Smith's life, especially their on- and off-screen chemistry during their days on Laramie. Smith had also attended the Festival of the West for two seasons, before declining health rendered it impossible for him to come.

On October 9, 2010, Fuller, James Drury, and Don Reynolds, participated in the Wild West Toy Show, sponsored by Bob Terry in Azle near Fort Worth, Texas. The event promotes horse riding and the purchase and exchange of western merchandising.

In September 2012, Fuller along with several other western celebrities attended the first annual Spirit of the Cowboy western festival held at Chestnut Square in McKinney, Texas. This event is being billed as the biggest and best western festival in north Texas.

In mid-2004, Fuller and wife Jennifer Savidge moved from Los Angeles to Texas to raise horses on a ranch in north Texas. His neighbor and long-term friend, Alex Cord, had urged Fuller to move to Cooke County. The two, who are the same age, had met in 1961 on the Laramie set when Cord made his television acting debut. Fuller's former Emergency! co-star and long-time friend, Randolph Mantooth, said in an interview with Tom Blixa of WTVN that he would no longer keep in touch with Fuller because of the relocation.

Fuller's stepfather, Robert Simpson, Sr., died in 2009.

On July 29, 2013, Fuller celebrated his 80th birthday with his fans and wife while vacationing on a ranch in Libby, Montana.

On November 9, 2014, Fuller and his wife commuted from Cooke County, Texas to Los Angeles, California to attend their longtime friend's/acting mentor's, Norman Lloyd's, 100th Birthday Party.


Friendships
Fuller's longest-lasting friendship has been with James Drury, whom he met (along with Robert Horton, 9 years Fuller's senior), when the three were under contract at MGM in 1954. Drury put Fuller in touch with Jock Mahoney, who in turn contacted Dick Jones. When their contracts were up, both Drury and Fuller moved to Universal, where they each starred in their own Western series. In 1959, Fuller co-starred opposite another old friend, John Smith, in Laramie (before joining the cast of Wagon Train after Laramie's cancelation), while Drury starred in The Virginian for 9 seasons; Fuller appeared in the same series later in its run, in two episodes in which Drury did not appear.

Drury was a fan of Fuller and Julie London's Emergency! series, a show that lasted 8 1/2 years. In an interview with another of Fuller's best friends, Drury said, "I had known Bobby Troup very well, we've done several shows together. But I never really knew Julie, except just to meet her. Bobby [of course] became lifelong friends with her, and so forth, but I never spent any time on the road with her, but I think Bobby Fuller did... Fuller... didn't really want to do a modern show. He wanted to do another Western, but Jack Webb talked him into it or insisted that he do it, and he was very happy, [of course] because it was a great success and he had a wonderful time with Julie London and with Bobby Troup."

Fuller was introduced to Julie London on the first episode of the second season of Laramie ("Queen of Diamonds"), where London played the wife of the sheriff. That episode brought Fuller into a wonderful relationship: at about the same time he met London's husband, Bobby Troup, where the two became lifelong friends, for four decades, from 1960 to 2000. Like Drury, London also called Fuller 'Bobby'.

According to his co-star and London's second husband, Bobby Troup, London was also known to be a very private and an introverted lady, who spent most of her time with her extended family, who also hated attending shows. London died on October 18, 2000, one year after Troup.

In a June 2013 interview with Tom Blixa of WTVN, Fuller said of his medical partner/secondary series' lead, in the series, about his dearest friend's, London's potty-mouth was, "She should've been a sailor. I'm telling you, I loved Julie. I've known Julie for years; and one of the things that made me happy about doing Emergency!, was working with Julie and Bobby; because they were friends of mine. I've known them for years, before that, Julie did Laramie with me; and I loved her. I loved her singing and I loved his playing. But to Julie, to get away with anything and when it came out of her mouth; it sounded like candy and we loved it, she was wild."

While struggling as an actor, Clu Gulager met Fuller, on the fourth episode of Laramie, where Gulager played a private who showed up at the Sherman Ranch Relay Station beaten and half-starved looking for help from Jess Harper, who was his brother-in-law. The friendship took off from there, where the lifelong connection began. Gulager was also reunited with Fuller on 2 more episodes of Wagon Train, and 1 episode of The Virginian, where Gulager was credited as a star, but like Drury, Gulager didn't appear in the episode.

In 1995, along with Fuller, Drury and Walker, Gulager also appeared on an episode of Kung-Fu: The Legend Continues, where he played a drunken deputy.

In 2012, after six decades of acting, at 83, Gulager had retired from acting, but continues to stay in touch with Fuller, and travels with him at various festivals, Festival of The West and Memphis Film Festival.

Being only 23 years old, Fuller met the unfamiliar actor, John Smith, along with another young unfamiliar actor, Doug McClure (Drury's future co-star on The Virginian), in the movie Friendly Persuasion, where he only had a limited line, where the two began to develop a lifelong friendship, in 1956. Then, right around the same time he co-starred with Smith in Laramie, Fuller also guest-starred with Smith on an episode of Cimmaron City.

He also starred with Fuller in Laramie, where the two had a wonderful on- and off-screen chemistry together, and would even meet some familiar as well as unfamiliar guest stars that went on to do bigger and better things. When the show Laramie ended in 1963, after a 4 season run, and 124 episodes, Fuller went onto do Wagon Train, where he created part of a character, after him, while Smith was found himself typecasted as Slim Sherman.

He also guest-starred in a few parts, most notably Emergency! with Fuller & London, and Police Woman, with Angie Dickinson, then later, Smith withdrew from acting.

Unlike Fuller, Smith was known to be a very private man, who was also known for traveling and raising horses. He was the very first guest at the Festival of The West, however, bad health prevented him from attending, hence, Fuller lost him on January 25, 1995, and Smith was cremated.

At only 28, and being the same age as Fuller, Cord met him on an episode of Laramie; Cord played the son of Dan Duryea's character, and this was Cord's first guest-starring role in his long career. Afterwards, the two remained friendly.

In 2002, one year after Fuller remarried with Cord as best man, Fuller attended Cord's wedding to Susannah Moller, where Fuller served as best man. Two years later, Fuller moved with his wife to Texas, where he and Cord became neighbors.