Oscar-nominated actor Stuart Whitman, dies

Stuart Whitman, a rugged Hollywood actor who earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a child molester in “The Mark” but was better known as a leathery star of action films and Westerns, including the 1960s television series “Cimarron Strip,” died March 16 at his home in Montecito, California. He was 92.

He had skin cancer, said his son Justin Whitman.

With his tousled dark hair, roguish smile and boxer’s physique, Whitman was a half-century staple of film and television. He played an Army paratrooper in the D-Day movie “The Longest Day” (1962) and a brash pilot in the British comedy “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines” (1965).

Whitman turned to acting after serving in the Army Corps of Engineers, where he spent his free time sparring and compiled a near-perfect record as an amateur light heavyweight boxer. Returning to Los Angeles, he rented out a bulldozer and did construction work until he began to have more success in films.

Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper speculated that he might be the heir to Clark Gable, calling Whitman “a fresh personality with tremendous impact.”

Indeed, he starred as the upstanding Marshal Jim Crown in “Cimarron Strip,” which premiered on CBS in 1967 and ran for one unconventional season, with weekly 90-minute episodes that reportedly cost a staggering $350,000 to $400,000 each. But he thrived playing heels, vagabonds and seductive womanizers.

“I like those kind of guys I suppose because I can’t be that way myself,” Whitman once told columnist Joe Hyams.

Whitman “always considered himself a bit of a cowboy,” his son Justin said.

Yet he also pushed back against that image, notably in “The Mark” (1961), an exploration of sexual deviance in which Whitman played a convicted sex offender

The older of two children, Stuart Maxwell Whitman was born in San Francisco on Feb. 1, 1928. The family moved frequently because of his father’s work in real estate, and Whitman said he attended 26 schools before graduating from Hollywood High in Los Angeles. He served in the Army Corps of Engineers after World War II and attended Los Angeles City College on the GI Bill.

Defying his father, who threw him out of the house when he learned Whitman was pursuing a career in show business, Whitman made his professional stage debut in a touring production of “Here Comes Mr. Jordan.” And he took bit parts on screen, beginning with the 1951 sci-fi disaster film “When Worlds Collide.”