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Facts About Denver Pyle
He may be best known as Uncle Jessie.
If you watch a lot of old TV shows, Denver Pyle has a huge presence. He’s perhaps most known as Uncle Jessie from The Dukes of Hazzard though he did a lot of work on Gunsmoke. In addition, he had a significant role as Mad Jack in The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.
However, I think my favorite Denver Pyle role was Briscoe Darling from The Andy Griffith Show. Briscoe was the head of the Daling clan. The Darlings were rustic, even by Mayberry’s standards. They were backwards, but generally good people who were surprisingly musically talented. Now, on to some things you didn’t know about Denver Pyle.
1: Perhaps Pyle’s most notable film role was Texas Ranger, Frank Hamer in “Bonnie and Clyde.”
Of course, ultimately Hamer tracked down Bonnie and Clyde and killed them. Back then, Hamer Time was a serious thing.
2: When I was a kid, my big three TV westerns were, “The Lone Ranger,” “The Roy Rogers Show,” and “The Gene Autry Show.” And Denver guest starred on all three of them.
And he played the usual array of western characters including a lawman, an outlaw and a man wrongly…
