Will Hutchins, the eccentric actor who portrayed the wholesome sharpshooter and frontier lawyer Tom Brewster on the 1957-61 ABC Western Sugarfoot, has died. He was 94.
Hutchins died Monday of respiratory failure at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York, his wife, Barbara, told The Hollywood Reporter. “He was hysterical, everyone loved him,” she said. “He had a great sense of humor, and it never gave up on him.”
Hutchins also starred as Woody Banner, who inherits a Manhattan brownstone from his uncle, on the 1966-67 NBC sitcom Hey, Landlord, created by Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson, fresh off their work on The Dick Van Dyke Show.
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Two years later, the blue-eyed Los Angeles native played Dagwood Bumstead opposite Patricia Harty on the 1968-69 CBS comedy Blondie. Based on the comic strip and following a set of films and a 1957 NBC series, it lasted just 16 episodes before being canceled.
On the big screen, Hutchins appeared opposite Elvis Presley in two movies: as the gourmet cop Tracy Richards (the name was a Dick Tracy pun) in Spinout (1966) and as buddy Tom Wilson in Clambake (1967), in which he lip-synced “Who Needs Money?” in a duet with the star.
A contract player at Warner Bros., the easygoing Hutchins shot to sudden fame as Brewster, who starts out on his series as the naïve new sheriff of Bluerock. In the first episode, he’s derisively called a sugarfoot, “someone who’s trying to work his way up to tenderfoot.”
As the show moves along, Brewster takes correspondence-school courses to become an attorney, and the title song notes that his character carries “a rifle and a volume of the law.”
Hutchins also had fun playing Brewster’s evil cousin, The Canary Kid, on three episodes.
“I got the dual role, I got to be the sweet, sarsaparilla-chugging-with-a-dash-of-cherry Sugarfoot and the whiskey-of-out-the-bottle Canary Kid,” he told Word on Westerns host Rob Word in a 2021 interview. “And I got to wear Humphrey Bogart’s pants [out of the wardrobe department], that was a thrill!”
Marshall Lowell Hutchason was born in Los Angeles on May 5, 1930. When he was a kid, he rode his bicycle down to a film shoot and wound up in a crowd scene in the W.C. Fields classic Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941).
He attended John Marshall High School and Pomona College and served for two years as a cryptographer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the Korean War, then went to UCLA film school on the G.I. Bill.
Hutchason was in a play with fellow Pomona alum Richard Chamberlain at the Ivar Theater in Hollywood, and that led to him being signed by Chamberlain’s agent, Dick Clayton. He made his onscreen debut on a 1956 episode of the Warner Bros. anthology series Conflict that starred Jim Backus — his future boss on Blondie —and was directed by Fred De Cordova.
An audition for the lead role of Pvt. Will Stockdale (eventually given to Andy Griffith) in No Time for Sargents(1958) and a similitude to Will Rogers Jr. led him to taking the stage name Will Hutchins. (He wound up with the role of the pilot with a hangover in the movie.)
In a twist, the pilot of Sugarfoot was based on the Rogers-starring 1954 film The Boy From Oklahoma.
Sugarfoot rotated in a Tuesday night slot during its first three seasons with two other Warner Bros. Westerns: the Clint Walker-starring Cheyenne in the first season; Cheyenne and the Ty Hardin-led Bronco in the second; and Bronco in the third. Hutchins appeared as Brewster in crossover episodes of those shows as well.
After Sugarfoot was canceled after four seasons and 69 episodes, Hutchins appeared in the films Claudelle Inglish (1961); Merrill’s Marauders (1962), directed by Sam Fuller; and the non-union The Shooting (1965), helmed by Monte Hellman.
In June 1964, he replaced Orson Bean to star on Broadway in the comedy Never Too Late, directed by George Abbott. (Richard Mulligan took over for him when he departed after about 10 months in the role.)
After Hey, Landlord and Blondie came and went quickly, Hutchins had small parts in Magnum Force (1973), The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington (1977) and Roar (1981) before leaving Hollywood — for the circus.
He worked as a ringmaster and was part of a clown troop in Los Angeles, then spent three years traveling around Australia with the Ashton Family Circus as Patches the Clown.
He wed Barbara, his second wife, in April 1988. He had a daughter, Jennifer, with his first wife, Chrissie Burnett, younger half-sister of Carol Burnett; they were married from 1965-69.
