Actor and philanthropist Hugh O’Brian passed away at his home on September 5, 2016 at the age of 91. Born Hugh Krampe in Rochester, New York and educated in Illinois, O’Brian left school at 17 and joined the Marines. He went on to become one of the youngest drill sergeants in the corps.

His good looks and acting skills led him to be hired by fellow actress, Ida Lupino in 1949’s “Never Fear” a film she was directing. After abandoning plans to attend Yale University to study law, O’Brian honed his acting skills in Hollywood. He was acting in a small theater group when Lupino spotted him.

Best known for his western roles, O’Brian was hailed as the first adult cowboy. In the television show, “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp”, which ran from 1955-1961, he portrayed an actual person in a western. In previous television westerns, cowboys were shown singing and stereotyped to appeal to adolescent boys. O’Brian continued to act into the 1990’s in various television and feature film roles, including more westerns.

His widow, Virginia Barber, to whom he’d been married for 28 years, said he told her every day he loved her. Also well known for his philanthropic interests, O’Brian went to Africa in 1959. O’Brian admired Albert Schweitzer’s dedication and work and influenced his own decision to found his own youth group.

The Hugh O’Brian Youth Organization helped teach leadership skills to high school students across the country.

Taking a portion of the program’s revenues, O’Brian invested sensibly in a structure company, a hotel, males’s toiletries and a business leasing weapons to TELEVISION western manufacturers. Later on, he repeated the function of Earp in 2 1989 episodes of Weapons of Paradise and the TELEVISION films The Bettor Returns: The Luck of the Draw (1991) and Wyatt Earp: Go Back To Tombstone (1994 ).

O’Brian was born in Rochester, New York City, the boy of Edith (nee Marks), who was half-German and half-English with Scottish origins, and Hugh Krampe, a United States marine corps officer turned sales executive whose moms and dads were German immigrants.

He participated in New Trier high school, Winnetka, Illinois, and 2 military colleges– Roosevelt, in Aledo, Illinois, and Kemper, in Boonville, Missouri. He left the University of Cincinnati after just one term to get in the United States Marine Corps (1943-47) and, at 17, turned into one of its youngest drill trainers in the 2nd world war.

When peace came, he had strategies to study law and headed to Los Angeles to generate income to assist him through Yale. Nevertheless, he selected functioning as a profession when a sweetheart was cast in the Somerset Maugham play House and Charm at the Wilshire Ebell theatre, Los Angeles, in 1947. He discovered himself standing in for the leading male when the star fell ill and, seeing his surname misspelled for promotion functions as Krape, chose to change to O’Brien– from his mom’s household– however another misspelling led it to end up being O’Brian, which he kept. Phase work continued in Los Angeles, in addition to Santa Barbara.