Rodd Redwing

Rodd Redwing (August 24, 1904 – May 29, 1971) was born Webb Richardson on August 24, 1904 in Tennessee, USA.[1] His father, Ulysses William Richardson (b. 1873), was Black and was an elevator man from Tennessee. His mother, Lillian Webb (b. 1878), was also Black and worked as a manicurist and hairdresser.[2] Lillian divorced her husband William in 1920.[3] Their son Webb moved to New York to pursue a career in acting and appeared in the 1929 musical "Malinda" in Greenwich Village with a cast of African American performers.[4] Webb later changed his birthname to Redwing, adopted a Native American identity, and changed his birthplace to New York City. Some sources reported that he used the Hindu-sounding name Roderick Rajpurkaii Jr. and said his father was a Brahmin mind reader from India.[5]

Rodd Redwing
Born(1904-08-24)August 24, 1904
Tennessee USA
DiedMay 29, 1971(1971-05-29) (aged 66)
Los Angeles, California, USA
OccupationActor
Years active1912-1970
SpouseErika Rosa Wagner

Biography

Redwing was one of the top gun, knife, tomahawk, and whip instructors in Hollywood. After claiming that he began in films in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1931 The Squaw Man (although no cast list shows that he acted in that movie), Redwing soon became a gun-handling coach to Alan Ladd, Ronald Reagan, Burt Lancaster, Glenn Ford, Richard Widmark, Anthony Quinn, Charlton Heston, Dean Martin, Fred MacMurray and many other actors. He performed Alan Ladd's fancy gunspinning seen in the film Shane during the climatic showdown.

Between 1951 and 1967, Redwing appeared in more than a dozen television programs, including a guest appearance on CBS's celebrity quiz show, What's My Line?

In eight episodes of the television series The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Redwing appeared in the part of "Mr. Brother," a Cheyenne friend and informer of deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp.[6][7]

Death

After filming his part in The Red Sun, Redwing died at the age of 66. On a flight from Spain to Los Angeles he suffered a heart attack and died 35 minutes later, just before the plane landed. The urn containing his ashes was buried in Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Film Credits

References
  1. Rodric Redwing, U.S. Social Security Act, Application for Account Number, 27 February 1937. On the U.S. 1930 Census, New York, Webb said both he and his father were born in Tennessee and his mother in Mississippi, 7 April 1930.
  2. World War One Draft Registration Card for Ulysses Richardson, 12 September 1918, retrieved from Ancestry.com
  3. Chattanooga News, 1 May 1920.
  4. New York Times, 4 December 1929, p. 40. See also Aleiss, Angela (2022), Hollywood's Native Americans: Stories of Identity and Resistance, Santa Barbara CA: Praeger, p. 94, 178, ISBN 978-1-4408-7156-6
  5. "Rod Redwing of Hollywood is Newest Actor". The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. August 2, 1949. Retrieved July 31, 2016.
  6. "Rodd Redwing". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved May 15, 2014.
  7. "Rico Alaniz". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved May 15, 2014.
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