HAL TALIAFERRO

Hal Taliaferro (born Floyd Taliaferro Alderson) was an actor from the 1910s to the 1950s. He was born in 1895 in Sheridan, Wyoming (though the family was from Birney, Montana), and his first job was working at a ranch owned by politician John B. Kendrick. He and his two brothers later returned to Montana to operate the Bones Brothers Ranch (his nickname was "Bones" and his brothers were "Big Bones" and "Little Bones"). He traveled to Hollywood and started out as a wrangler working with horses on cowboy movies in the mid 1910s, and then became a star in B-westerns in the mid 1920s, using the name Wally Wales (after a producer thought he resembled actor Wallace Reid and the Prince of Wales). His career started downhill in the middle 1930s, and he (perhaps to save face) started taking much smaller parts under the names Hal Taliaferro. He continued appearing in many minor roles until the mid 1950s when he retired and built himself a log cabin on the family ranch in Montana. B-Western expert Janus Barfoed visited him in 1968 and took a photo of him in front of the cabin. To avoid the harsh Montana winters, he would move to Arizona and take odd jobs before moving back to his cabin in the summer. He passed away in 1980 at the age of 84. The University of Florida has many of his papers, sketches and photographs.