John McIntire; Character Actor Played Many Radio, TV Roles

John McIntire, the commanding character actor whose career extended from radio’s legendary “March of Time” to television’s popular “Wagon Train,” with stops in between for stage and film work, died Wednesday.

Family members in Kalispell, Mont., where McIntire regularly took refuge from acting to stay at his ranch near the Canadian border, said he was 83.

He died in a Pasadena hospital where he was taken over the weekend from a second home in Laguna Beach.

He had been suffering from cancer, said his longtime friend and colleague, actor Elliott Reid.

With and without his wife, Jeanette Nolan, McIntire was heard on dozens of radio’s most remembered shows and seen in more than 50 films.

While normally his parts were secondary to the male stars of his era, he came into his own in two TV series: “Naked City,” where he was featured as veteran detective Lt. Dan Muldoon opposite the younger James Franciscus, and “Wagon Train,” where as retired wagonmaster Chris Hale he took over the westward-bound caravan after the death of Ward Bond.

But he bowed out of “Naked City” in 1959 after only 26 episodes and was reluctant to sign his “Wagon Train” contract in 1961 because of his love for his native Montana.

He and his wife tried to spend six months of every year at their primitive, untrampled ranch where he was raised by a father who was an attorney, an Indian commissioner and an early conservationist.

McIntire came to Los Angeles to study at USC and because of his resonant voice and articulate phrasing landed a job at radio station KEJK (now KMPC). He sailed the world as a merchant seaman and then returned to radio, this time in New York.

With Miss Nolan and other established actors of the day his was one of the voices heard impersonating famous world figures on “March of Time,” narrated through much of its life by Westbrook Van Voorhis.

McIntire also was heard as the criminologist “Bill Lance,” the criminal turned psychiatrist in “Crime Doctor,” the narrator on “The Man Called X” and a regular on “On Stage,” a highly praised 30-minute series of classic dramas in 1953-54.

McIntire’s television work also included the family drama “American Dream,” the miniseries “Innocent and the Damned,” the comedy “Shirley” and as Clay Grainer on “The Virginian,” TV’s first 90-minute Western.

He generally played sympathetic cops, weathered cowhands or fatherly figures in films ranging from “Call Northside 777,” “Command Decision,” “The Asphalt Jungle” and “Apache” to “Away All Boats,” “Elmer Gantry,” “Psycho” and “Rooster Cogburn.”

Reid, who was doing juvenile parts on “March of Time” when he first met McIntire, remembered him Thursday as “a man of great dignity . . . and a lot of fun.”

In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter, Holly, and a grandson.