The all but forgotten American actor Richard Travis had the good luck to star in the heady company of Bette Davis, Anne Sheridan, Monty Woolley and Jimmy Durante in his first major film, Warner Bros.' The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941). But luck is a relative thing, and Travis' luck began running out when it was clear he didn't have the star charisma to sustain his brief early fame. By 1944 Warners was starring Travis in the B-minus second feature Busses Roar; within two years he was in such poverty row quickies as Alaska Patrol. Like many would-be luminaries of the '40s, Travis was consigned to low grade horror films of the '50s like Mesa of Lost Women (1953) and Missile to the Moon (1955). Richard Travis enjoyed one burst of national celebrity in 1955 as the star of the Highway Patrol lookalike TV series Code Three, which was still being regionally rerun into the early '60s.
by Hal Erickson
biography
