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Towering, solidly built, robust screen performer with gleaming smile and booming baritone, the movie musical's Great White Hope during the 1950s, the genre's declining years. An untrained natural talent who worked as a singing waiter and for an aircraft manufacturer before turning to the stage, Keel made his film debut in England (1948's The Small Voice aka Hideout while touring with a production of "Oklahoma!" Back in the United States, his dynamic performance opposite Betty Hutton in Annie Get Your Gun (1950) launched him as a Hollywood leading man. Keel subsequently starred in a slew of musicals, many of them remakes; his best role was that of riverboat gambler Gaylord Ravenal in the 1951 version of Show Boat He also appeared in Pagan Love Song (1950), the TV-cowboy satire Callaway Went Thataway (1951), Desperate Search, Lovely to Look At (both 1952), Calamity Jane (as Wild Bill Hickok), Kiss Me, Kate (both 1953), Deep in My Heart, Rose Marie the jubilant Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (all 1954), Kismet and Jupiter's Darling (both 1955).
When the studios phased out lavish movie musicals, Keel took a variety of leading roles (he was Saint Peter in 1959's The Big Fisherman) in mostly undistinguished dramas, Westerns, and action films, among them Armored Command (1961), The Day of the Triffids (1963, a modest sci-fi film now well regarded), The Man From Button Willow (1965, a voice in this animated feature), Waco (1966), The War Wagon (1967, as a wisecracking Indian, supporting John Wayne and Kirk Douglas), andArizona Bushwackers (1968). During the 1970s he toured on stage with hisSeven Brides costar Jane Powell. In 1981, a silvery-haired, distinguished Keel assumed the role of Clayton Farlow on the TV soap "Dallas," which he played for the remainder of the run. The renewed recognition this series brought him enabled Keel to play concert dates and record a new album.
Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia
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