Dan Blocker Net Worth

Dan Blocker's Quotes

• [advice his father gave him] "Son, the rate you're growing you're going to be one helluva big fella. If you use your size and strength properly it can be a wonderful thing for you. If you don't, Heaven help you. One day you'll start pushing some little guy around and he'll pull a gun and blow your brains out."
• Being big has its advantages, especially when you're doing the rounds of the agents' offices. They don't forget you in a hurry. But it has its disadvantages, too. You've got to have a bed special made . . . mine is 7 feet long. You've got to be careful when you sit down. I used to wreck a couple of chairs a week in the studio. Weight is a problem with me. If I don't watch it, it shoots up to around 300 pounds. It bugs me having to go on a diet but there isn't any alternative. I remember breakfast when I ate a dozen eggs, two loaves of bread and drank two quarts of milk. Now I eat like a normal guy and I'm always hungry. If I had been a little guy I'd probably still be teaching school in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
• Fame frightens me; it truly does, perhaps because I wasn't expecting it. I feel like I have a tiger by the tail. I'm in this business for the money. I need money, like anyone else, because I want to give to my wife and kids a good home and a good life. It's what any man wants to do for his family. Hell, man, I'm just an ordinary guy.
• My daddy used to say that I was too big to ride and too little to hitch a wagon - no good for a damn thing.
• I can lose five pounds by walking to the corner store.

Interesting Facts about Dan Blocker

1. There is a museum dedicated to Dan Blocker in the West Texas panhandle town of O'Donnell, about 40 miles south of Lubbock.
2. Father of producer David Blocker (b. 1955) and actor Dirk Blocker (b. 1957) as well as identical twin daughters, Debra Lee and Danna Lynn (both born 1953).
3. Interred at DeKalb Cemetery, DeKalb, Texas, USA.
4. Started and owned the Ponderosa Steakhouse and Bonanza Steakhouse restaurant chains.
5. The Long Goodbye (1973) is dedicated to him. Robert Altman, who had directed many early episodes of Bonanza (1959), and had become friends with him, had originally cast him in the role of Roger Wade. However, Blocker died before filming commenced, so the role was subsequently filled by Sterling Hayden.
6. Attended and played football for Sul Ross State College, Alpine, Texas, graduating in 1950.
7. All of his children studied karate under Chuck Norris.
8. Blocker was approached to play Major "King" Kong in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) after Peter Sellers was injured. However, according to Terry Southern (co-writer), Blocker's agent rejected the script as being "too pinko".
9. Best remembered by the public for his role as Hoss on Bonanza (1959).
10. Taught high school in West Texas before becoming an actor.
11. With some repertory theater experience at the time, the Korean War interrupted his fledgling career. He instead returned to teaching school after his military discharge and went to work on his Ph.D at the University of Calfornia in Los Angeles. Finances were a problem at the time and it was then that he fell back into acting and found TV work.
12. Received his first taste of theater life at college when the drama club was performing "Arsenic and Old Lace", and needed someone to pack up the bodies from the cellar for the play's curtain call.
13. Hardly the romancer, one touching and acclaimed Bonanza (1959) episode had his Hoss character fall in love with a beautiful girl, played by Inger Stevens.
14. Once was considered for a lead role in the movie M.A.S.H. (1970).
15. Former schoolteacher.
16. Served in the Korean War, a first sergeant with the 45th Oklahoma Division.
17. Attended Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and played football. After that he entered Sul-Ross State College on a football scholarship, and was an amateur boxer. While at Sul-Ross he not only won the 1949 Best College Acting award for his portrayal of De Lawd in a production of "Green Pastures," but met his future wife, Dolphia Lee Parker, originally from Alpine, Texas.
18. Was enrolled at the Texas Military Institute in San Antonio when he was 13 years old and weighed 200 lbs.
19. Father was a poor Texas farmer who lost the farm after the Depression. His father later went into the grocery business.
20. His weight was 14 lbs. at birth, on Monday, December 10th, 1928.