Kirby Grant

Kirby Grant (November 24, 1911 - October 30, 1985) was a long-time B movie and television actor, mostly remembered for having played the title role in the Western-themed adventure television series, Sky King.

Grant was born as Kirby Grant Hoon, Jr., in Butte in Silver Bow County in southwestern Montana. He was a child prodigy violinist. He continued to study music and became a professional singer and bandleader. In 1939 the "Gateway to Hollywood" talent-search contest awarded him a movie contract. These "Gateway" contracts were already prepared with fictitious screen names (thus Josephine Cottle became "Gale Storm" and Ralph Bowman became "John Archer"; Grant won with Dorothy Howe, who became "Virginia Vale"). Grant's contract was made out to "Robert Stanton," and Grant used the pseudonym in his earliest films before adopting his first and middle names professionally. "Robert Stanton" and "Virginia Vale" were introduced in the RKO Radio Pictures feature Three Sons, with Edward Ellis and William Gargan. For the next few years Grant freelanced among various studios; his most familiar picture from this period (as Kirby Grant) is probably Blondie Goes Latin, a 1941 film with Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake.

In 1943, Grant signed with Universal Pictures, where he played romantic leads in B musicals, and in Abbott and Costello and Olsen and Johnson comedies. His smooth baritone voice got him teamed with Universal's singing star Gloria Jean for two features in 1944, and then Universal selected him to replace Rod Cameron (who had just been promoted to more important roles) as the studio's B-Western series star in 1945.

These seven westerns established Kirby Grant as an action star. In the late 1940s Monogram Pictures hired him for a series of mounted-police adventures, featuring "Chinook the Wonder Dog." Grant was working in this capacity when television beckoned in 1951 with the contemporary series Sky King.

Grant starred as Arizona rancher-pilot Schuyler "Sky" King, who fought bad guys and rescued people with his airplane. Production spanned much of the Cold War; early villains were bank robbers and kidnappers; some later foils were Russian spies and saboteurs. Sky's first airplane was a Cessna T-50 (known among pilots as the "Bamboo Bomber" because of its wooden wings), and later a much more modern Cessna 310B. Sky's airplanes were named "Songbird". Sky and his niece "Penny", played by Gloria Winters, lived on the "Flying Crown Ranch". Ron Hagerthy appeared in nineteen episodes of the first season in the role of a nephew named "Clipper". Viewers were told that Clipper had joined the military. The series called for Grant to wear the same outfit in each episode. This was a common practice in the early days of television: the series regulars in Adventures of Superman and Dragnet, for example, always wore the same outfits so different episodes could be filmed at the same time, and file footage could be added to new footage without anyone noticing.

Grant did little acting after the show ended although he and Gloria Winters were in demand for personal appearances at fairs and aviation events. He traveled with the Carson and Barnes Circus from 1967 to 1970. Grant retired that year. Sky King continued to play in reruns, but Grant received no residuals.

Grant and his wife, Carolyn, had three children. In the early 1970s, the Grants moved from California to Florida.

The couple founded the nonprofit Sky King Youth Ranches of America, which provided homes for abandoned or orphaned children. He had plans to resurrect the Sky King series with the Flying Crown Ranch becoming a home for such kids, and publicizing their stories, but it never materialized.

Grant was killed in an automobile accident near Titusville in Brevard County, Florida, at the age of seventy-three. He was not wearing his seatbelt. He was en route to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger at Cape Canaveral. He was to have been honored by the astronauts for encouraging aviation and space flight. He is interred in Missoula, Montana.