James Drury, Alias The Virginian

When Owen Wister published The Virginian in 1902, he created the  quintessential fictional Western hero (more than 60 years before Clint Eastwood made The Man With No Name popular) and gave birth to an American literary genre. Gary Cooper once played Wister’s hero on the screen, and more recently Bill Pullman, but for most of us, James Drury is The Virginian. The New York-trained actor played the title role for nine years in NBC’s 90-minute television Western. Starring Drury and Doug