Make no mistake about it: Kurt Russell was pretty dadgum proud when he was notified by officials of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum that he had been invited to be an inductee into the museum’s Hall of Great Western Performers. But he was even prouder that his late father, character actor Bing Russell, would be inducted alongside his son.
The elder Russell actually “starred” in a hugely entertaining 2014 documentary, The Battered Bastards of Baseball, which focused on his colorful 1973-77 career as the flamboyant manager of the aptly named Portland Mavericks, an independent Class A minor league baseball team. But C&I readers likely know him better for his decades of supporting roles in innumerable TV and movie westerns, including The Magnificent Seven, Last Train from Gun Hill, The Horse Soldiers, Rio Bravo — he’s the fellow who gets shot by Claude Akins, thereby setting the plot into motion — and several episodes of Bonanza in which he played Deputy Clem Foster.
“My father once said he wanted to be in the Baseball Hall of Fame and win an Oscar,” Kurt told me during a recent interview. “And now he’s in the Hall of Great Western Performers. Which I think to him — well, it’s not an Academy Award, but it’s something that I think guys like him and me have maybe a deeper appreciation of, just because it means a lot. I’m very happy that’s happened for him. And I’ve left that hat of his from , gave it to the museum, so
