Chill Wills Trailers
Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade TrailerDrive-In Movie Memories TrailerThat's Entertainment! III Trailer
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: 114
06 December 1935
Cattle rustler Nevada dreams of living like an emperor in the West. Hoppy and the Bar 20 boys aim to put an end to his dream.
12 December 1963
A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.
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).
20 January 1939
A federal agent infiltrates an outlaw band that's taken over a western town.
01 March 1959
A lonely boy finds companionship with a horse.
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.
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.
01 May 1947
After his plane is downed in the South Pacific, a Navy flier recounts his life to a co-pilot while awaiting rescue.
15 December 1948
A singing cowboy clears a boy accused of murder by finding the real killer.
01 March 1951
Unable to keep peace between frontier Indians and the US Cavalry, a heroic Captain risks court-martial to prevent bloodshed.
11 June 1969
A visitor to the Everglades swamps in Florida encounters and falls in love with an uneducated girl. But he finds competition for her affections from the unlikely and mysterious A.
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.
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 March 1936
Hoppy returns to find Johnny in trouble. Buck Peters has been shot by Porter who made it look like Johnny did it.
07 January 1950
Oscar nominated short Western film. Ranch-hands get their ideas challenged when a stranger shows up, telling them how good they have things.
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.
30 May 1941
Billy "The Kid" Bonney is a hot-headed gunslinger who postpones his life of crime when he is befriended and hired by peaceful cattle rancher Eric Keating.
01 June 1961
Director Andrew V. McLaglen's 1961 drama, based on John William Fox's novel, is the tale of a young man returning home after fighting in the Civil War.
01 September 1942
The coming of the railroad to the West triggers an Indian war.
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.
29 June 1939
Cattlemen fight corrupt railroad men out to destroy the forest.
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.
23 October 1960
The legendary true story of a small band of soldiers who sacrificed their lives in hopeless combat against a massive army in order to prevent a tyrant from smashing the new Republic of Texas.
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.
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.
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.
08 January 1965
Ben (Glenn Ford) and Marion (Henry Fonda) are two cowboys who make a meager living breaking wild horses.
08 February 1950
During World War II, a junior American Army officer, Lt. Peter Stirling, gets sent to the psychiatric ward whenever he insists that an Army mule named Francis speaks to him.
01 May 1973
Forced to kill a young Abilene gunman in the line of duty, Sheriff Matthew Roberts, torn by anguish takes off his badge and leaves Kansas.
12 November 1963
Aging rancher and self-made man, George Washington McLintock is forced to deal with numerous personal and professional problems.
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.
23 May 1973
Pat Garrett is hired as a lawman on behalf of a group of wealthy New Mexico cattle barons to bring down his old friend Billy the Kid.
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.
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.
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.
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.
01 September 1950
When a sudden spurt of murders occurs in the Big Bend country, suspicion immediately falls on a young drifter who just moved to the area.
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".
31 March 1976
A collection of film clips profiling animal actors.
15 November 1950
Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke is posted on the Texas frontier to defend settlers against depredations of marauding Apaches.
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.
20 July 1950
Screwball black comedy about a wacky family that forgets where they've buried a corpse.
17 December 1978
Ranch hand Stubby Pringle journeys to a Christmas dance, hoping to find his true love, and learns a valuable lesson about the spirit of the holiday along the way.
07 August 1953
During the war for Texas independence, one man leaves the Alamo before the end (chosen by lot to help others' families) but is too late to accomplish his mission, and is branded a coward.
28 November 1944
A year in the life of a turn-of-the-century middle class family, leading up to the opening of the 1904 St.
26 May 1939
A large packing company is trying to obtain a monopoly by taking over the last small independent meat packer.
25 November 1952
After Celia's father dies, a war erupts over control of his land.
05 May 1939
A young girl begins to wonder if she really fits into the upper-class sorority she's trying to join.
18 January 1946
On a train trip out west to become a mail-order bride, Susan Bradley meets a cheery crew of young women traveling out to open a "Harvey House" restaurant at a remote whistle-stop.
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.
10 April 1953
Rick Belrow Livingston, in love with Broadway star Lisa, is sentenced to 30 days in jail for speeding through a small town.
13 September 1939
A pigeon breeder is hired to train a racehorse that wins only when it drinks beer.
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.
26 October 1940
Two rival tugboat captains compete for local business.
23 April 1937
Kitty Reily and Lena Marchetti meet each other at an amateur Radio Show. Kitty quickly learns to greatly dislike incompetent Lena.
31 December 1942
U. S. Navy Lieutenant Gregg Masterman, of The Harvard and Boston Back Bay Mastermans, learned about the sea while winning silver cups sailing his yacht.
25 December 1945
A socialite marries a prominent novelist, which spurs a violent, obsessive, and dangerous jealousy in her.
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.
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.
18 December 1946
Jody convinces his parents to allow him to adopt a young deer, but what will happen if the deer misbehaves?
