Quentin Tarantino Pays Tribute To Late Actor Rick Dalton
The film world is still reeling from the recent loss of actor Rick Dalton, whose passing was first announced on May 19th, 2023 by The Video Archives Podcast's official Twitter account. Dalton, who passed away at his Honolulu, Hawaii home (shortly after celebrating his 90th birthday in April), is survived by his wife, one-time Italian starlet Francesca Cappucci.
The Video Archives Podcast, created and hosted by filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (who famously met and became friends while working at the Manhattan Beach, California video store that the podcast is named after), aired an episode on May 22nd that is apparently part one of a multi-episode run that revolves around the directors' memories of Dalton and his work.
While other friends and fans of the actor such as Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt have yet to make any official statements or remembrances, Tarantino has made sure that Dalton's name isn't fading into the ether like so many stars of yesteryear. The "Pulp Fiction" director made sure to include a tribute to Dalton on the marquee of one of his Los Angeles repertory theaters, the New Beverly Cinema, in addition to these ongoing podcast episodes and tweets. As Tarantino, Avary, and others are rightfully pointing out, Dalton's long career in television and film contains too much good work and just plain fun entertainment to be forgotten forever.
From 'Bounty Law' to true crime
If Rick Dalton ever became a household name, it was during the run of the NBC Western TV series "Bounty Law," in which he played bounty hunter Jake Cahill from 1959 to 1963. A rival program to CBS' "Wanted Dead or Alive" (starring future movie icon Steve McQueen), "Bounty Law" saw Dalton not only demonstrate his considerable chops but share the screen with a number of notable guest stars ranging from Charles Bronson to Darren McGavin.
Dalton attempted to spin the show's success into a feature film career, but the loss of a role in John Sturges' "The Great Escape" (a role that, in a bitterly ironic turn of events, went to McQueen) impacted the actor both personally and professionally. He still managed to do good work in supporting roles in such films as 1965's "Tanner" (a Western epic), 1967's "Jigsaw Jane" (a proto-giallo featuring Dalton as the killer), and most famously the gritty WWII adventure, 1966's "The 14 Fists of McClusky."
Dalton kept the lights on during the late '60s by traveling to Italy and making a series of highly enjoyable European genre pictures like "Nebraska Jim" and "Operazione Dyn-O-Mite!" (both 1970). As Tarantino mentions on the latest episode of his podcast, Dalton had a wild real-life altercation back in Hollywood around this time:
"He also had a thing that happened with him in the late '60s where three hippies were bursting into his house, and they were tripping, and they had a gun with them, and his stunt double basically beat the brains in of two of them, and Rick set the other one on fire with the flamethrower from 'The 14 Fists of McClusky'."
This incident, though ultimately minor, is still fondly remembered trivia for true crime aficionados and L.A. historians to this day.
'A Gun for Billy' leads to 'The Fireman' triumph
As the 1970s rolled around and New Hollywood dawned, it seemed at first that the generation of actors who were trained during the last vestiges of Old Hollywood were starting to get lost in the shuffle. This could've easily been Rick Dalton's fate, relegated as he was to guest shots on shows like "Land of the Giants" and "Green Hornet," a step down even from prior guest appearances on "Lancer" and "The FBI."
However, as Tarantino detailed on the Video Archives podcast, Dalton gained some notoriety by becoming "a big hit on 'The Johnny Carson Show'" and making a public appearance at the Republican Convention, all of which led to him being cast in more prestigious shows like "Mission: Impossible" and 1970's "A Gun for Billy." Reading from Herbert Gomez's book about Dalton, Tarantino highlighted the importance of the Richard Donner-helmed pilot episode of "Billy" to Dalton's career:
"'A Gun for Billy' was [Donner's] best work. Rick was sensational on the show, and after having a bad reputation in the '60s, he started developing a good reputation in the '70s."
Dalton rode that good reputation into the exploitation flick heyday of the late '70s and early '80s, co-starring in 1976's "Grizzly" and then appearing in one of the best and most jaw-droppingly daring action movies of the '80s: 1980's "The Fireman." That movie, an unholy mashup of "Death Wish" and "The Exterminator" (with a dash of "Don't Go in the House") was written by Dalton's longtime stunt double, Cliff Booth, and was directed by Dalton himself. The success of the picture led to two sequels, the second of which (directed by Booth this time around) is generally regarded as the best of the trilogy.
A fairy tale of a career
After the "Fireman" trilogy's success, Dalton became a star all over again, this time as part of the '80s direct-to-video boom, which saw many former stars of Dalton's age getting leading man parts in genre features as opposed to being relegated to supporting roles in blockbusters. Dalton's fanbase grew anew, with younger fans rediscovering his older movies during TV airings as well as "Bounty Law" reruns on Nick at Nite.
Dalton's small but passionate fanbase in the home video world allowed him enough visibility that he was able to land parts in bigger movies toward the end of the decade, most notably the late-'80s Vietnam War action drama "Coming Home in a Body Bag." Ironically, this was the second time Dalton was involved (albeit tangentially this time) with true crime; the producer of "Body Bag" and its lesser sequel "Body Bags 2," Lee Donowitz, was brutally gunned down in his Los Angeles hotel room during a botched drug deal in '93.
Fans of Dalton such as myself who discovered the actor's work almost wholly in retrospect are eager to hear more of Dalton's history on upcoming episodes of Tarantino and Avary's podcast, whether it's about his wild early days or his later years living with Francesca in Hawaii. For now, I join Tarantino, Avary, and all Rick Dalton fans who mourn his passing. The actor led a full life and enjoyed a widely varied career that may not have made him a huge star but nonetheless should not be forgotten. When one looks back at the number of legends Dalton got to work with as well as the still-underrated genre gems he made, it's easy to think of his career as fairy-tale-like, the sort of life that can only happen once upon a time ... in Hollywood.