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(written from a Production point of view)

Ron Soble (28 March 19282 May 2002; age 74) was the actor who played Wyatt Earp in the Star Trek: The Original Series third season episode "Spectre of the Gun".

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Soble enlisted in the Army in 1946, serving for two years in the 11th Airborne Division and spending a year deployed to Japan. Discharged in 1948, Soble attended college and also became involved with the Army ROTC program. He was commissioned an officer in 1951 and spent two more years on active duty in the Army Signal Corps. Released from active duty in 1953, Soble held an inactive reserve commission until his final discharge from the Army in 1955.

Soble made his film debut in an uncredited role in Roger Corman's I Mobster. Fellow Original Series guest star Celia Lovsky also had a role in this film. The following year, he had a role in the biographical Al Capone, featuring Nehemiah Persoff.

In 1969, he co-starred with John Wayne and fellow Original Series guest actors Kim Darby, Alfred Ryder, Jeff Corey, and John Fiedler in True Grit. Soble's other films include Gun Fight (1961, with Charles Cooper), The Cincinnati Kid (1965, with Jeff Corey and Robert DoQui), Chisum (1970, with Glenn Corbett), Papillon (1973, with Anthony Zerbe, Bill Mumy, Gregory Sierra, and Victor Tayback), and The Beast Within (1982, starring Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch). He also appeared in the 1984 made-for-television movie The Mystic Warrior, starring Robert Beltran and Nick Ramus, and the 1987 TV movie Convicted: A Mother's Story, along with Randy Lowell, John Mahon, and Lisa Chess, and The Mod Squad (1971, with Rex Holman, Michael Ansara and Tige Andrews).

Soble later appeared in two little-known films, Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills (starring Aron Eisenberg) in 1994, and Street Corner Justice (with Tommy "Tiny" Lister, Jr. and Clint Howard) in 1996.

Soble and series regular Walter Koenig knew each other before Soble's appearance in "Spectre of the Gun".

Ron Soble died from lung and brain cancer in 2002. His last film role was an uncredited appearance as a judge in the popular comedy Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (with Richard Riehle and Oded Fehr).

Further reading[]

  • "Frontier Nightmares", Mark Phillips, Starlog, issue 152, March 1990, pp. 62-62

External link[]

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