Howard Keel, the star of numerous classic film musicals of the 1950s such as Annie Get Your Gun and Calamity Jane and whose career was later relaunched on the 1980s TV series Dallas, died yesterday.
The 85-year-old actor had died of colon cancer, according to his son, Gunnar.
The 6ft 3ins baritone singer was one of Hollywood's leading men during the heyday of the MGM musicals, singing with the likes of Doris Day, Esther Williams and Kathryn Grayson. Keel found fame again in the early 1980s in the soap Dallas as stepfather to the infamous JR Ewing
Keel was born Harold Clifford Leek on April 13 1919 in Gillespie, Illinois.
His father was a naval captain turned coal miner, who committed suicide when Keel was 11, leaving his strict Methodist mother to raise him alone in California.
He described his childhood as "terrible, rotten" and started his career as a car mechanic. At the age of 20, he went to a concert where he heard the baritone Lawrence Tibbett and decided to become a professional singer; his first job was as a singing busboy at a Los Angeles cafe.
After a stint with the Douglas Aircraft Corporation in southern California, where he sang for workers at manufacturing plants, his first big breakthrough came when he was hired by Oscar Hammerstein II to tour the US with Oklahoma! He sang in Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals in New York and London, where he made his film debut in The Small Voice (1949), a thriller.
Back in Hollywood, Keel became an overnight star in Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun, which led to a string of starring rolls in glittery MGM productions throughout the 1950s, including Show Boat, Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Jupiter's Darling.
With the demise of Hollywood film musicals in the 1960s, he travelled the US, singing on stage and appeared in a number of westerns, including The War Wagon (1967) with John Wayne.
At the age of 66, with his career looking like it was starting to wane, he was signed to Dallas, playing Clayton Farlow, husband of "Miss Ellie" Ewing. He stayed with the show for 10 years until it folded in 1991.
"The show was enormous," Keel said in an interview in 1995. "I couldn't believe it. My life changed again. From being out of it, I was suddenly a star, known to more people than ever before. Wherever I went, crowds appeared again, and I started making solo albums for the first time in my career."
Keel was married three times and had four children.
