Chill Wills Trailers
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Chill Theodore Wills (July 18, 1902 – December 15, 1978) was an American film actor, and a singer in the Avalon Boys Quartet.
He was a performer from early childhood, forming and leading the Avalon Boys singing group in the 1930s. After appearing in a few westerns he disbanded the group in 1938, and struck out on a solo acting career.
One of his more memorable roles was that of the distinctive voice of Francis the Mule in a series of popular films. Wills' deep, rough voice, with its Western twang, was matched to the personality of the cynical, sardonic mule. As was customary at the time, Wills was given no billing for his vocal work, though he was featured prominently on-screen as blustery General Ben Kaye in the fourth entry, Francis Joins the WACS. He provided the deep voice for Stan Laurel's performance of "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" in Way Out West (1937), in which the Avalon Boys Quartet appeared.
Wills was cast in numerous serious film roles, including as "the city of Chicago" as personified by a phantom police sergeant in the film noir City That Never Sleeps (1953), and that of Uncle Bawley in Giant (1956), which also features Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean. Wills was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role as Davy Crockett's companion "Beekeeper" in the film The Alamo (1960). However, his aggressive campaign for the award was considered tasteless by many, including the film's star/director/producer John Wayne, who publicly apologized for Wills. Wills' publicity agent, W.S. "Bow-Wow" Wojciechowicz, accepted blame for the ill-advised effort, claiming that Wills had known nothing about it. The Oscar was instead won by Peter Ustinov for his role as Lentulus Batiatus in Spartacus.
In Rory Calhoun's CBS western series The Texan, Wills appeared in the lead role in the 1960 episode entitled "The Eyes of Captain Wylie".
Wills starred in the short-run series Frontier Circus which aired for only one season (1961–62) on CBS. In 1966, he was cast in the role of a shady Texas rancher, Jim Ed Love, in the short-lived ABC comedy/western series The Rounders (reprising his role in the 1965 film The Rounders, starring Henry Fonda), with co-stars Ron Hayes, Patrick Wayne and Walker Edmiston.
in 1963-64, Wills joined William Lundigan, Walter Brennan and Efrem Zimbalist Jr. in making appearances on behalf of U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee in the campaign against U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson.
In 1968, Wills refused to support Richard Nixon for the presidency and served as master of ceremonies for George C. Wallace, former governor of Alabama, for the California campaign stops in Wallace's presidential campaign.[5] Wills was among the few Hollywood celebrities to endorse Wallace's bid against Nixon and Hubert H. Humphrey; another was Walter Brennan.
Also in 1968, he starred in the Gunsmoke episode "A Noose for Dobie Price", where he played Elihu Gorman, a former outlaw who joins forces with Marshal Matt Dillon, played by James Arness, to track down a member of his former gang who has escaped jail. His last role was in 1978, as a janitor in Stubby Pringle's Christmas. CLR
Most Popular Chill Wills Trailers
Total trailers found: 110
21 February 1941
When Edward Creighton leads the construction of the Western Union to unite East with West, he hires a Western reformed outlaw and a tenderfoot Eastern surveyor.
18 December 1946
Jody convinces his parents to allow him to adopt a young deer, but what will happen if the deer misbehaves?
10 November 1939
South western Pennsylvania area of colonial America, 1760s. Colonial distaste and disapproval of the British government is starting to surface.
08 February 1950
The truthful soldier Stirling didn't know how to lie about his source of information, the talking army Mule, Francis, so he was treated as a lunatic and led to one after another hilarious situations, where the mule was the only one that appeared in his right mind.
30 May 1941
Billy Bonney is a hot-headed gunslinger who narrowly skirts a life of crime by being befriended and hired by a peaceful rancher, Eric Keating.
18 September 1940
Drifter Cole Harden is accused of stealing a horse and faces hanging by self-appointed Judge Roy Bean, but Harden manages to talk his way out of it by claiming to be a friend of stage star Lillie Langtry, with whom the judge is obsessed, even though he has never met her.
30 August 1940
Two buddies who rise from fly-by-night wildcatters to oil tycoons over a twenty year period both love the same woman.
03 March 1977
An Italian mechanic finds that he has inherited a billion-dollar company from his dead uncle, but he needs to be in San Francisco in 20 days to sign over the will.
15 June 1959
Walt Disney and Art Linkletter co-host a live celebration of Disneyland's 1959 expansion that consisted of the debuts of Matterhorn Bobsleds, the Disneyland-Alweg Monorail, and the Submarine Voyage, a project so massive that it was called "The Second Opening of Disneyland".
01 April 1943
In the small town of Crownport local attorney Bill Adams is trying to break up the ring of corrupt town officials by running for mayor.
06 July 1969
A retired Texas Ranger and three aged pals help to clean up a town run by a crooked mayor, a drunken judge and a trigger-happy sheriff.
28 December 1960
Good girls Merritt, Melanie, Tuggle and Angie - all students at mid-western Penmore University - are planning on going to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for spring break to get away from the mid-western snow despite not having much money to spend once there.
05 May 1939
A young girl begins to wonder if she really fits into the upper-class sorority she's trying to join.
01 November 1954
Marjorie Main is the whole show in the Universal programmer Ricochet Romance. Playing the outspoken new cook at a rundown dude ranch, Marjorie forces everyone around her to pitch in and bring some life back into the place.
12 June 1953
Chicago cop Johnny Kelly, dissatisfied with his job and marriage, would like to run away with his stripper girlfriend Angel Face, but keeps getting cold feet.
01 August 1951
The spoilt young son of a wealthy railroad owner manages to get himself lost in the middle of nowhere.
01 July 1994
Some of MGM'S musical stars review the studios history of musicals. From The Hollywood Revue of 1929 to Brigadoon, from the first musical talkies to Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain.
20 November 1948
When an heiress finds out that the friendly young man she's met at Sun Valley is really an investigative reporter, she ruins his career by falsely claiming they're married.
18 February 1961
Fur-trapping partners stumble across a cache of gold, but their discovery quickly attracts every greedy villain in the territory.
08 January 1965
Ben (Glenn Ford) and Marion (Henry Fonda) are two cowboys who make a meager living breaking wild horses.
01 October 1941
Fast-talking con-man and grifter Candy Johnson rises to be the corrupt boss of Yellow Creek, but his wife's alcoholic father tries to set things right.
13 April 1949
It's Tulsa, Oklahoma at the start of the oil boom and Cherokee Lansing's rancher father is killed in a fight with the Tanner Oil Company.
15 September 1971
In the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, a mild-mannered professor decides to live out all of his daydreams, travelling across the country and adopting a different persona in each city.
10 June 1953
A man who has a talking mule gets a job on a newspaper, and both get mixed up in a murder trial.
13 September 1940
With the army after him and his partner deserting, Reb decides that a change of scenery would be nice so he heads for Wyoming with Dave.
01 December 1953
Jim Harvey is hired to guard a small wagon train as it makes its way west. The train is attacked by Indians and Harvey, hoping to persuade Aguila, the chief, to call off the attack due to Harvey's having saved his son's life, leaves the train to negotiate.
28 November 1944
Young love and childish fears highlight a year in the life of a turn-of-the-century family up to the 1904 St.
30 July 1954
Peter Stirling (with his old friend the talking mule) is recalled to active duty...in the WACs!
15 December 1954
A returning Korean War vet becomes embroiled in a fight over possession of a tungsten mine.
14 November 1963
Henry J. Tyroon leaves Texas, where his oil wells are drying up, and arrives in New York with a lot of oil money to play with in the stock market.
31 December 1944
Mary Marshall, serving a six year term for accidental manslaughter, is given a Christmas furlough from prison to visit her closest relatives, her uncle and his family in a small Midwestern town.
30 April 1948
Two female con artists from New York City, fleeing the law with money from their latest scam, hide out in a small town in Maine, near the Canadian border.
13 July 1956
Two American gun runners at odds with each other and looking to sell guns to the rebels during the Cuban War of Independence navigate a boat to Cuba.
01 May 1942
Circus owner Buck Rand kidnaps Boy to perform in his show. He forces a pilot to fly him, Boy and his animal trainer out of the jungle.
25 July 2004
An account of the life and work of American film director Sam Peckinpah (1925-84), a tortured artist whose genius and inner demons changed the Western genre forever.
27 September 1940
This final Carter film is a lot of fun, with Nick (unwillingly, at first) taking on a ring of Fifth Columnists (since this was filmed before the US entered the war, we're not told the villains are Nazis, but it's pretty clear anyway).
06 November 1951
"The Sea Hornet" was a merchant ship sunk, supposedly by a torpedo, less than a mile off the California Coast during World War Two.
06 March 1936
Hoppy returns to find Johnny in trouble. Buck Peters has been shot by Porter who made it look like Johnny did it.
01 May 1952
A veteran rodeo rider takes on a young apprentice in order to "teach him the ropes", and winds up competing against him.
07 June 1966
Stock car racer Dave Owens plays into the hands of whiskey runners by agreeing to drive in a cross-country road race.
30 November 1962
A man searching for a stolen army payroll is joined by several men after the reward money. One of the pursuers, after killing a ranch foreman, elopes with the ranchers' daughter.
15 December 1948
A singing cowboy clears a boy accused of murder by finding the real killer.
08 November 1956
Wealthy rancher Bick Benedict and dirt-poor cowboy Jett Rink both woo Leslie Lynnton, a beautiful young woman from Maryland who is new to Texas.
01 July 1952
Francis the talking mule gets his owner in and out of trouble while he is taking basic training at West Point.
28 March 1941
Lopez is a bandit who has stolen the herd at Gil's ranch, so Hardy is about to foreclose. But Lucia has come back from New York and Gil is happy until he meets her husband, Morgan.
18 May 1950
A greedy businessman tries to block the building of a new railroad in his area.
21 November 1945
An Army corporal and his con-man sidekick take a shortcut to heroism in World War II France.
08 October 1943
Bud Hooper, a cadet at Winsocki Military Academy, sends an invitation to movie star Lucille Ball to come to Winsocki's big dance.
30 December 1956
A young cowboy, whose dedication to the principles of peace and reason has earned him a reputation for cowardice, overcomes his psychological aversion to violence after his elder brother unjustly censures him for not joining in a foolhardy gunfight in which their youngest brother is killed.
06 June 1992
Documentary about the making of the John Wayne film The Alamo (1960). Included are behind-the-scenes photos and footage of the actual production of the film, clips from it and interviews with members of the cast, crew and local residents in Brackettville, TX, where it was filmed.
18 March 1944
Journalist Marion Hargrove enters the Army intending to supplement his income by writing about his training experiences.
16 April 1937
Stan and Ollie try to deliver the deed to a valuable gold mine to the daughter of a dead prospector. Unfortunately, the daughter's evil guardian is determined to have the gold mine for himself and his saloon-singer wife.
23 March 1939
The bank has been robbed, the night watchman killed and the safe opened. The townspeople want John as he was the only one with the combination.
01 May 1951
In this funny sequel to the popular Francis the Talking Mule, the talkative Mule and his pal Peter get a job working on a horse-breeder's ranch.
18 February 1955
A young man seeks his father's killers among lumberjacks, and discovers that they are actually timber barons who also seek to control lumber mills.
06 June 1961
Ex-army officer accidentally kills a woman's son, tries to make up for it by escorting the funeral procession through dangerous Indian territory.
12 November 1963
Ageing, wealthy, rancher and self-made man, George Washington McLintock is forced to deal with numerous personal and professional problems.
26 October 1940
Two rival tugboat captains compete for local business.
31 March 1976
A collection of film clips profiling animal actors.
30 January 1942
An old-time cavalry sergeant's resistance to change could cost him his post.
