Background

Theodore C. Wills was born on July 18, 1902, in Seagoville, Texas, to entertainers Robert B. Wills and Frances Elizabeth Rublee.

Education

He was "educated" in medicine shows, honky tonks, and burlesque halls. He learned to sing in the Dallas First Baptist Church.

Career

Later he joined a professional singing group in Burkburnett, Texas. He added humorous monologues to his singing performances and moved to Chicago at fifteen to play a hick straight man in burlesque for $60 per week. Wills said he "graduated from Minsky's to vaudeville" in the 1920's. In one memorable New Year's Eve performance, Wills portrayed the old year, and the new year was played by two-year-old Mickey Rooney.

In 1936, Wills made his last vaudeville appearance on stage in San Francisco beside ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. Wills said he turned to nightclubs because vaudeville houses were closing so quickly. He formed a country and western singing group, Chill Wills and the Avalon Boys. They appeared in films and played themselves in Way Out West (1937), which starred comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The group also played themselves and sang in a Hopalong Cassidy film, The Bar 20 Rides Again (1936). The group split up in 1938.

In that year Wills was discovered by a movie executive while performing his routine at the Trocadero, a nightclub in Hollywood, California. His craggy features, raspy voice, rural Texas twang, twice broken nose, wry humor, and uncomplicated sincerity made him a natural to play supporting roles in Westerns. He made six pictures in a series for RKO studios that starred George O'Brien. Wills played a garrulous prevaricator appropriately called Whopper Hatch. He performed in an average of three or four movies, mostly Westerns, each year for the next forty years. He portrayed a number of character roles, usually as some hero's sidekick and almost never played a villain. Although he performed opposite some of the biggest stars in Hollywood, including Walter Pidgeon, Gary Cooper, Robert Taylor, and John Wayne, Wills was known for stealing scenes. For example, he stood out as the rangy, laconic deputy sheriff in Boom Town (1940), which starred Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, and Hedy Lamarr. Wills performed in several musicals, including Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) and The Harvey Girls (1946). Perhaps his greatest stretch was playing a monsignor in The Cardinal (1963). In 1939, Wills settled in North Hollywood.

Despite his many acting roles, Wills is perhaps best remembered as the voice of Francis the Talking Mule in a series of six popular and successful comedy films between 1950 and 1955. Wills also wrote or ad-libbed nearly a third of the mule's lines. In addition, Francis memorabilia, from record albums to windup toys, sold briskly. For selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of United States defense bonds during the Korean War, Wills and Francis received public acclaim from Generals George C. Marshall and Dwight D. Eisenhower and Vice-President Alben Barkley.

In 1960, Wills played Beekeeper, a lovable, whiskey-guzzling, humorous sidekick to John Wayne's Davy Crockett in The Alamo. Wayne, who also directed the picture, hired a publicist and paid him an unprecedented $125, 000 to promote the film, which secured seven Oscar nominations, including one for Wills as best supporting actor. Wills, believing that this opportunity would not pass his way again, hired his own press agent and flooded the Hollywood press with garish, self-promoting ads.

Wills also invested his money in a series of business ventures, including a restaurant chain and his own brand of chili, splitting his time between his acting career and business management. He became active in politics toward the end of his life and expressed an interest in running for governor of Texas. The closest he got to elective office, however, was warming up audiences at fund-raising rallies for Alabama governor George Wallace in 1971. As the nation's taste for Westerns began to diminish in the 1960's, so did opportunities for the aging character actor. He starred in the television series "Frontier Circus" (1961 - 1962) and "The Rounders" (1966 - 1967). One of his most memorable film performances was in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973). His last role was in the television movie Stubby Pringle's Christmas (1978). He died on December 15, 1978, at his home in Encino, California, of cancer.

Achievements

• Theodore Childress "Chill" Wills was an outstanding actor and a singer, who is best remembered for his numerous western character roles in film and on television. Chill Wills was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6923 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on February 8, 1960.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Island In The Sky / McLintock / The High and The Mighty John Wayne Action 3-Pack

    (Island in the Sky (1953) A C-47 transport plane, named ...)

  • book

  • Kentucky Rifle (1956)
  • Kentucky Rifle - Digitally Remastered

Connections

In 1939, Theodore Childress Wills married Betty Chappele, by whom he had two children.

After the death of his first wife in 1957, he married Novadeen Googe in 1973.

Father:

Robert Bruce Wills

Mother:

Frances Elizabeth Wills (Rublee)

Sister:

Lucile Wimberly (Wills)

Wife:

Novadeen Wills (Googe)

Wife:

Betty E. Wills (Chappele)

Daughter:

Jill Wills

Son:

Will Wills

Brother :

Morton Wills