March 10 Birthday Wishes

Edward Norris [1911 - 2002]

Venetia Stevenson [1938 - ]

There's another Norris with a birthday today. Chuck Norris (1940-)

Howdy Manco!!

About the only thing I know about Edward Norris, is that he appeared in the well known film Boys Town.

Venetia Stevenson appeared in Day Of The Outlaw with Robert Ryan, Burl Ives and Tina Louise. She also appeared in several t.v. westerns like Cheyenne, Sugarfoot and Colt .45. She was married to actor/dancer Russ Tamblyn and a 2nd marriage to singer Don Everly of the Everly Brothers.

Ed

Edward Norris appeared in a number of westerns during his career, his first being Wagon Trail in 1935. “That was a thrill because Harry Carey was a big star at the time and was very highly respected. I
was very honored that he put me in the picture as his leading man. I thought his family was great. Just like the Holt family, Jack, Jennifer, and Tim Holt. I did one (The Mysterious Desperado) with Tim and loved it. He was a real gentleman. I did a couple with Gene Autry (Back in the Saddle, The Singing Sheriff & The Blazing Sun) and he was a wonderful guy, too. Really great. A very nice man, and very charitable. He did a lot for everybody he worked with. There weren’t too many gentlemen in the business. Lewis Stone warned me when I
was doing Queen Christina, ‘I know you’re just starting out in the business, but be careful of your friends. Hand pick them very carefully because you are very much judged by who your friends
are in this business.’ He was another one of the very few gentlemen in the business.”
When Jim and I asked Ed if he learned to ride horses for the movies, he replied, “I was fooling around with horses when I was twelve. I also went into the cavalry at the Culver Military Academy, which was a very tough test. There would be a team of horses on the tanbark going in a circle and you had to vault over the first one and land on the second, then you’d have to stand up on both of them with one leg on each horse like they do in the circus. This was the test to
just get in the black horse troop. The black horse troop was famous in the respect that it was always used in the parade in Washington DC every time a president died or was inaugurated. So it was quite an honor to get in that horse troop and be a part of it. I learned a lot about horses then. And when I was married to Jean Dean, she was so involved with horses that we got into the Peruvian Pasos, and the day before yesterday my baby, who is very green and has only been trained for two months, won his first championship out at the Pomona Fair.”
He also appeared in some other westerns like Frontier Marshal with Randolph Scott in 1939; The Wolf Hunters with Kirby Grant in 1949; Surrender with William Elliott in 1950; The Man from the Alamo (as one of the Alamo defenders) with Glenn Ford in 1953; and lastly in The Kentuckian with Burt Lancaster in 1954. He also appeared in an episode of Guy Madison's Wild Bill Hickok. Add to these westerns, the lead in some classics like Show Them No Mercy; They Won't Forget & The Mystery of Marie Roget, as well as a the lead in one of those old serials (Jungle Queen) and the star in numerous B-movies like Decoy & Wings over the Pacific; add to these numerous support roles in the above mentioned Boys Town and numerous others, Edward Norris had quite a career in the movies.