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Western films and television shows have been staples of the film industry for over a century. For a long time, they were the most popular genre in American cinema. Today, they exist in a more niche environment where the genre can be reinvented for entertainment's sake. One thing that made Westerns great was their ability to adapt real-life moments from the American West with such authentic detail that the audience feels transported back to that time.

One popular real-life character who was depicted in Western cinema is Wild Bill Hickok. James Butler Hickok, commonly known as Wild Bill Hickok, lived many lives during his 39 years on Earth. To name a few of his trades, he was a gunslinger, lawman, cattle rustler, and gambler. Due to his versatile way of life, his story has been retold in numerous shows and movies. Each show or movie has created striking Westerns about him,...

Tad Devine, who appeared alongside his father, the popular raspy-voiced character actor Andy Devine, and younger brother in the Dana Andrews-starring 1946 film Canyon Passage, has died. He was 88.

Devine died March 22 in Newport Beach, his family announced.

In Universal Pictures’ Canyon Passage, directed by Jacques Tourneur and also starring Susan Hayward and Brian Donlevy, Andy Devine portrayed an Oregon homesteader with sons played by his real-life boys, Tad and Denny. (The kids even got billing on the movie poster.)

Andy Devine, who appeared with John Wayne in John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and was Roy Rogers’ sidekick, Cookie, in 10 movies and the deputy marshal Jingles on the 1950s CBS show Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, died in 1977 at age 71. He had a rather distinctive voice.

Tad was born Timothy Andrew Devine in Los Angeles on Nov. 26, 1934. “His childhood on the family ranch was filled with characters and adventures, from horseback...

Actor Robert Blake, a man with a long and complex legacy, has died, a representative for his son-in-law Gregg Hurwitz confirmed to Variety. The former child actor was best known for his Emmy-winning role as the cockatoo-owning undercover cop in the popular 1970s TV series “Baretta” and, more infamously, for his trial following the 2001 murder of his wife. He was 89.

As reported by the Associated Press, Blake died from heart disease on Thursday at his home in Los Angeles.

These two aspects of Blake’s legacy were inseparable in some ways, and the personal turmoil that made the latter at least circumstantially plausible (the case against Blake hinged on motive — he may have wanted to be free of his rocky marriage) fueled his acting.

Blake was acquitted of the murder charge, as well as of one count of soliciting murder, in his criminal trial in 2005, but in a civil trial later that year,...