Dennis the non-Menace
06/04/08 11:01 AM
By ED BARK
TV icon Dennis Weaver, who died on Feb. 24, 2006, would have been 84 on Wednesday, June 4.
His long-spanning TV career took him through roles ranging from hobbled Chester Goode on Gunsmoke to cowboy cop Sam McCloud.
Weaver also found time to cut some homespun back-porch commercials touting the virtues of WFAA8's newscasts. And he played a knockoff of famed Houston surgeon Red Duke in the short-lived 1987 series Buck James
But Weaver gets his coolness cachet as the terrified but resourceful motorist in the 1971 Steven Spielberg movie Duel. Preceding Jaws by four years, it was the famed director's first full-length film. Here's the great, wheel-spinnin', one-minute trailer from Duel, with Weaver braving both a malevolent semi-truck driver and a rattle snake bite.
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