Jimmy Noel

Herbert James "Jimmy" Noel was born May 15, 1903 in Haverhill Massachusetts, the youngest of four children, and son of Walter and Annie Noel. After graduating from high school, Noel worked in entertainment as a theater actor, musician, and singer. Proficient on piano, guitar, drums, banjo, and as a singer, he worked briefly for Paul Whitemanin the early 1930's, leaving in 1935. He eventually started his own band, "The Rhythm Boys," (no relation to the group with Bing Crosby), specializing in blues music. Noel was married at least twice. The first marriage was to to Delories Ziegfield (distantly related to Florenz Ziegfield) in 1933. It ended in divorce after about a year. The second marriage was to Dawn Hope, a theater actress who was the daughter of the well-known and eccentric actress Adele Blood Hope. The marriage ended after 18 months under unusual circumstances, when Dawn Hope took her life following the couple's unexpected visit to a nudist camp (neither of them was a naturalist). Neither marriage produced children. Around 1936, Noel took a job as a policeman in Chicago, moonlighting as a musician. In 1943, he moved to Los Angeles. His day job is unknown, but he worked in a handful of movies and as a musician until 1952. The rapid growth of television required many more actors and extras, and the Western genre gained popularity in the early 1950's. The reliable Noel had the natural look of a cowboy, and he found work in such as "Range Rider," "The Gene Autry Show," " Annie Oakley," and "Death Valley Days." When the public's love of Westerns caused a wide proliferation of the genre in the late 1950's, Noel was kept busy as a background player and occasional bit roles. His 140+ appearances on "The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp" was second only to the show's star Hugh O'Brian, and he worked on most other Westerns of the era, prolifically with those on CBS. But it was "Gunsmoke" where Noel found steady work. He had 227 appearances on the show. More importantly, his close similarity, from a distance, to costar Milburn Stone (Doc) landed him weekly work on the series as Stone's stand-in and stunt double. When Gunsmoke went off the air in 1974, and with TV gravitating from the rural/western genres to more reality-based shows, Noel found work much scarcer. His health declined in later years, and he spent the last four years of his life at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, dying on January 31, 1985.