by Fenton Bresler; Pageant, January 1975
On the night of December 30th, 1971, handsome, 31-year-old Pete Duel left his girlfriend in bed, walked naked into the front room of his house–and blew out his brains. “Cerebral destruction,” are the grim words of the police report that I read in the office of the local coroner. Why did he do it? Why did the star of the highly successful television series, Alias Smith and Jones, a top success on both sides of the Atlantic, destroy himself in the early hours of that December morning?
It could only happen in Hollywood. “I don’t know why he did it. I really don’t,” a publicist friend of Pete’s told me. “I couldn’t believe it then — it’s three years ago now and it still doesn’t seem real.”
What chance did I stand of trying to find out what brought Pete Duel to sudden — and young — death?
I was lucky. Through an actor friend, I made contact with Pete’s younger brother — 30-year-old Geoffrey Deuel. Also an actor, he has the same easy good looks, the same ready smile. We met in a coffee shop on the Sunset Strip. For over an hour he talked to me — reluctantly at first — about Pete.
Their childhood was idyllic. Pete was born in a small country town near Rochester, New York. His father was a local doctor, his mother a nurse. There had never been any actors in the family.
The two brothers were very close. Both loved the country. “In the summer,” said Geoffrey, “we built ourselves a wooden cottage out by a lake.”
“It was lovely,” says Geoffrey. He looked around at the crowded coffee shop and smiled. “It seems so long ago.”
Pete’s first ambition, like that of many schoolboys, was to be an airline pilot. But his sight was not good enough; in later years, unknown to the millions who watched him on the screen, he wore glasses for reading while not working.
So after local high school he went up to St. Lawrence University to study the liberal arts. “He was not really very committed to his studies,” said Geoffrey. “A young college guy raising hell with no idea what he wanted to do with his life.”
But that was where he first got really interested in acting. He did some plays at the university and, in his second year, his parents came up to see him perform in Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tatoo. Dr. Deuel was impressed. His son was not doing well in his official studies — so he said to Pete: “Why don’t you just quit wasting your time and my money, and go and study this professionally someplace?”
Pete auditioned at the American Theater Wing school in New York — and got in. For two years, from 1959 to 1961, he was a young drama student in that brash, exciting skyscraper city. He got a few jobs in summer stock, road shows, some off-Broadway pieces. Finally, in the spring of 1963, he ended up in California, playing one of the leads in a touring production of a Broadway comedy. “You could do very well in Hollywood,” a local actor friend told him.
So in the summer of 1963, Pete moved over from New York to the Californian City of Dreams; he cut his first name down from “Peter” to “Pete,” he changed the spelling of his surname from “Deuel” to “Duel.” He wanted to be a success.
“It was an exciting time for Peter,” says his brother. “He started going out, trying to land guest roles on various TV series. Eventually, he got a co-starring role in a comedy series, Gidget”
It lasted only a year. But it was followed by another year-long run in a comedy show, Love on a Rooftop, with Judy Carne, the Laugh-In star.
“He liked doing comedy,” said Geoffrey. “He was very good at it.” But in 1967 the show was cancelled and Pete suddenly found himself unemployed.
“He never ‘went Hollywood’,” Charles Parker, a leading West Coast television writer, told me. “He never owned a suit or a tie. He was always just the same as when he first arrived: a nice young guy in denim shirt and faded jeans.” But all actors are neurotic; they always fear their last job will really be their last.
Pete got used to working. Money was not his worry. He rented a small apartment over a garage for about $65 a month; his car was a little Japanese jeep. But he wanted passionately to work. He was devoted to acting. He had plenty of girlfriends — though usually one at a time. Yet girls, as such, did not come near to the center of his being. Acting was his ruling need.
When in July 1967, Universal, the most successful motion picture studio in Hollywood, offered him an exclusive 7-year contract, he accepted it. “Yes, he got tied up,” said Geoffrey Deuel. “A contract means you get paid every week, not per show. It means also that the studio will give you work because they want to build you up.”
When Pete Duel signed that contract — which for so many young actors would have been a gateway to Utopia — he started on the road that led to “cerebral destruction.”
When a major Hollywood company signs up anyone on a long-term contract, it is a business investment. They give the youngster “exposure” in a selection of parts to see which gets the bigger following. Then when the moguls deem the time is right, they put him in a series — as a “star.” He does very well out of it financially; so do they.
That is what happened to Pete Duel — only he did not do very well out of it in terms other than commercial.
In October 1970, Universal offered Pete the co-starring role, with Ben Murphy, of “Hannibal Heyes,” in their new western series Alias Smith and Jones. It was not a run-of-the-mill cowboy idea. Hannibal Heyes and his buddy Kid Curry were two reformed outlaws trying to go straight and earn a final reprieve. The characters — based loosely on the Paul Newman-Robert Redford team in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid — were affable, friendly guys who laughed and joked, and did not like killing.
Pete had already turned down two previous series. If he said “No” this time, the studio moguls would almost certainly put him on suspension — which meant he would get no money and be unable to work elsewhere. He would rather have gone on doing meaty guest roles in other peoples’ series — not to be the “star” of his own. But, in his brother Geoffrey’s words, “he really had no choice.”
Geoffrey makes it clear that he does not want to attack the Studios. “That’s the way it is; that is the rule of the game. Certain other actors would just love to have a series; they would be on Cloud Nine.”
But that month Pete Duel got himself hopelessly drunk, staggered to his car, drove out onto the fast-paced Hollywood roads — and collided with another car, almost killing two people. The accident was entirely his fault. For unknown to the world, Pete was an alcoholic. “Yes, he had a drink problem,” said Geoffrey. “Drink can often intensify happy moods and can, very easily, magnify depressing moods. To Peter, drink was an off-and-on thing. He could go for a year without a drink — but when he did things he often did them to an extreme. Often the problem with a romantic and an idealist is that he is too hard on himself.”
Romantics and idealists should not try to work in a mass-production factory. That is what a successful Hollywood television film-making studio is today. An hour-long show is shot in only six days. The actors must get seven to eight minutes film time “in the can” per day. It is remorseless.
Harold Frizzell was Pete Duel’s stand-in in Alias Smith and Jones. “He was one of the greatest guys you could meet. He was a hard person to understand, but I could read him. He just had so much love that he wanted to spread it. He loved people in general, everybody. His attitude was that people are human beings and entitled to be treated as human beings. He loved kids. He wanted to settle down with a good woman who would look after him and give him kids — a whole house full of kids.
“He came back home with me to Kentucky and he would call my parents ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’ — he would phone them from the set. He loved his own parents, too, and both his Grandmas. One he loved a lot; he bought her a brand new TV set. I could not have asked for a better friend. He was one of the greatest guys, especially in this business. This is a dog-eat-dog world.
“The simple things in life were what Pete loved — so simple that most other people would not like them. ‘Let’s take a walk in the woods,’ he would say, and we would sit out all day beside a lake and fish. He was just about the best-liked person who ever worked at Universal studios.
“He was crazy about ecology and hated pollution. He would not use plastic cups on the set — only glass ones. He would not use anything that would not dissolve and go back into the earth.”
Alias Smith and Jones was a great success. Pete became admired and famous among millions of people all over the world. Yet he told a journalist I met over there that the show was “junk and I hope it gets scrapped.”
Egbert Swackhamer, “Swack” to his friends, is a leading television film director. He directed Pete Duel many times. I spoke to him on the set at the Warner Brothers Studios. He was brutally outspoken: “He had a self-destructive urge, that young man. I have seen it before in actors with a real natural, in-born talent. He was an instinctive actor. Pure gold! Yet he was self-destructive — and self-indulgent. He was into everything — drugs, booze, you name it. He did not spare himself in self-abuse.”
In May 1971, while Alias Smith and Jones was still being churned out at the Universal factory, Pete Duel’s drunken driving case came up in court. Pete wrote to the judge:
In recalling my feelings on that night, shame and terror were in my mind. Sitting here eight months later it is very difficult to re-create the events of the accident or even try to find justification for my conduct. But I do want your Honor to know that I am a person basically interested in other people and I would not knowingly harm anyone.”
The probation officer spoke up for Pete. The drunken driving charge was not proceeded with. He was fined $1,000 for dangerous driving, put on probation for two years — and disqualified from driving for two years. He was lucky not to go to jail.
“From then on, I became Pete’s chauffeur,” said Harold Frizzell. “I used to collect him in the morning, bring him to the studio, give him his script for that day. He said it was so much rubbish he couldn’t read it except in small daily doses — then work with him all day, and collect him at the end and bring him back home.”
“This series, any series, is a big fat drag to an actor who has any interest in his work,” Pete told Hollywood reporter Cecil Smith in September 1971. “It’s the ultimate trap. You slowly lose any artistic thing you may have. It’s utterly destructive.”
By now, Pete was utterly and completely disenchanted with Alias Smith and Jones.
“It isn’t the work that tires you,” he told Smith. “It’s that it’s all such a dreadful bore it makes you weary, weary.”
“A successful series is, like Pete said, a trap for an actor who wants to do better things,” top television script writer Bernard Slade told me. “It’s very seductive. The money is fantastic. Of course, it makes pressures. An actor who wants to expand, to develop, finds himself trapped in a hit. He cannot go on, he has to stay where he is; the character does not develop. It stays the same; it is a personality.”
Pete became even more outspokenly bitter about his work. In November 1971 he told Cecil Smith — for publication — “Contractually, I have to do this series — or some other trash.”
The end was drawing near. Like any other factory employee, Pete began work at the studio on the latest six-day shooting of an Alias Smith and Jones episode early on the morning of Monday, 27th December 1971 — two days after Christmas.
Shooting proceeded as usual. If anything, Pete seemed more relaxed that week. His parents had not managed to get over from New York State to spend Christmas with him, but they were due to arrive that Friday morning, December 31, and spend the weekend in Los Angeles with their two sons. The Christmas tree stood in Pete’s front room with his parents’ presents wrapped beneath the branches waiting for them.
“I was going to have dinner with the family that weekend,” Egbert Swackhamer had told me. “Those boys idolized their father; they loved, feared him. I thought he must have been eight feet tall — the way those boys talked about him. I was looking forward to meeting him.”
On Thursday, December 30, 1971, Pete Duel finished work for the day at around 7 p.m. An episode of Alias Smith and Jones was being shown on TV at 8:00 that evening. Pete had telephoned his girlfriend Dianne Ray and asked her to come over to his place and watch it with him.
Harold Frizzell drove Pete home and came in to watch the show. “Dianne and Pete kinda lived together,” says Harold, “but she had her place as well.”
She was already there, and the three settled down to watch the show.
“Pete did not like it,” Harold told me. “He said it was trash. He did not like the dialogue.” Then he switched channels to watch a basketball game. Halfway through, Harold said he was tired and going off home. “All right, man, see you in the morning,” said Pete.
These were the last words that Harold Frizzell ever heard Pete Duel speak.
Harold assured me that Pete was sober when he left. “He had not been drinking all day long,” he says. “He could quit drink whenever he wanted to.”
Yet at about half past one the following morning — when Dr. and Mrs. Deuel were [about to fly] 3,000 miles across the continent to join their son — a grief-stricken Dianne Ray telephoned the Hollywood police. Pete was dead.
On arrival at the house, Sergeant Paul Estrada found the actor lying naked on the floor of his front room under the Christmas tree with his parents’ presents spread out all around him. A revolver was lying beside him. “There was no doubt he had shot himself,” Sergeant Estrada told me. “It was a contact wound to the head. The angle of the bullet clearly showed he had held the gun to his temple and fired.”
Dianne told Sergeant Estrada and his colleagues that after Harold Frizzell had left, Pete drank heavily. She said she went to bed in the small house’s only bedroom. Pete stayed in the front room. About 1.25 a.m. he came into the room, naked, took the gun from a box, and left saying, “I’ll see you later.”
Minutes later, she heard a shot fired in that front room.
“We did a lie-detector test on the girl,” says Sergeant Estrada. “Everything she said proved valid.”
Why did Pete do it? The police mind is often a simple mind: “The autopsy showed the guy had three times as much alcohol in his blood as would have got him convicted for drunken driving,” Sergeant Estrada said. “He was completely smashed. I guess there is a lot of pressure on these stars. I don’t know why he wanted out of it — making steady money, and all. I suppose it was the drink.”
I have been to the house where Pete Duel died. I have stood in that front room. His landlady has tried for over two years to clean the blood stain off the carpet. It is still there. I have seen the remains of that poor fellow’s blood forever stained into the weave. “I knew Pete very well,” said the landlady. “I still can’t believe he shot himself. He was under pressure, but, by God, so are we all. He was a young boy; he wanted to get out of his series and to do some really good work that he thought he was capable of. All right. But why this?”
Harold Frizzell believes to this day that Pete tried to call him shortly before he blew his brains out. He racks himself with torment that it may have been a cry for help. “At about one a.m., my telephone rang,” Harold said. “But I was asleep. By the time I could get to it, it had stopped ringing. The only guy who would have phoned me at that hour would have been Pete. Often in the night when he was lonely or wanted a chat he would phone me and we’d talk for hours.”
At Universal Studios that Friday morning, nothing was allowed to mar the day’s shooting for that day. Ben Murphy, Pete Duel’s co-star, went ahead and worked. The crew turned out. The cameras rolled. Says Pete’s publicist friend: “They did all the shots for that week’s episode that didn’t require Pete.”
Did they think they could possibly use that week’s episode? Big money was at stake. Next Monday, three days later, it was announced that Roger Davis would take over Pete Duel’s part. Wearing a black hat, black shirt and gilt holster, he would — with Ben Murphy — reshoot the previous week’s episode and complete the series.
I talked to Ben Murphy about his dead co-star. We met on the set of his latest success, Griff.
“It’s a pleasure, Fenton, to meet you. How are you?” he said, when we were introduced. I told him I was writng about Pete Duel and asked: “What makes a man do a thing like that?”
“I have no comment.”
“How did his death affect you?”
“I’m sorry, Fenton, no comment.”
“Who made this rule, you or the company?”
“No, only me. So you know that if ever you see any comment by me in the press on Pete, it didn’t really come from me; it’s not true.”
“All right, thank you,” I said.
“That’s O.K., Fenton. I’m sorry.”
And a successful, handsome, young television star went back to work in a television factory.
“What I cannot understand,” I said to my friends here, “is how on earth Pete Duel could choose that particular moment to kill himself — when his parents, whom he loved so dearly, were at that very moment flying out to see him.” [Editor’s Note: This is actually NOT a fact; Pete’s parents were not, at the time, in the air.]
“But isn’t that classic?” replied Bernard Slade. “Isn’t that often the way with suicides? They do it in such a way as to deliberately hurt the people they most love. It’s as if they want to destroy not only themselves, but others whom they love the most.” [Editor’s Note: Slade makes outrageous claims here.]
Geoffrey Deuel did not want to talk to me about his brother’s death. I only dragged two words from him about it. But I believe they supply the essential clue: “Accidental suicide.” It is a descriptive phrase.
I think it all blew in his mind as he sat there in the front room of his country-style house, a drink in his hand and his girlfriend asleep in his bed behind. What was it all about? What was the use of it all? Perhaps we’ll try something, see what happens…
Alias Smith and Jones did not long survive the death of Pete Duel. “He was the real star. A lot of the success of the series was due to him,” Egbert Swackhamer told me. And so it proved. Despite Universal’s hurried re-casting and the valiant efforts of Roger Davis to play the part created by someone else, the show ran for only seventeen more episodes. Then the moguls killed it — as effectively as Pete killed himself.
Dianne Ray left Hollywood after Pete’s death. She lives [now] in Mexico. A friend of mine met her down in Acapulco a few months ago. He says she is a pleasant, friendly girl working as assistant manageress in a coffee shop. She seems happy. So far as I know, she is still not married.
Harold Frizzell still works at Universal Studios as a stand-in. But he has not found another Pete Duel: “You only meet a guy like that once in a lifetime.” Harold is married now and lives not far from the studios.
There is irony to Charles Parker’s comment on Pete’s death: “Perhaps part of it was frustration in his work. He was successful, but he did not really feel a success. He did not think that what he was doing was worthwhile.”
I leave the last word to Geoffrey Deuel:
Pete felt there were other things he wanted to do. Acting was not enough in itself. He wanted to do other things for people that he considered more meaningful — and he wanted to have better parts. Possibly, that was a shame, because he forgot how much happiness he gave to so many people.”
[Editor’s Note: Pete confided in his brother, Geoffrey Deuel, that Harold Frizzell wasn’t as much of a close friend as Harold claimed.]
I remember were I was when I found out about Pete death that night I was at a new years party in liverpool my friend got me onto watching alias Smith a Jones and I loved it he was a great actor so sad there will never be another pete duel😥😥😥😥
Pete Duel was my teenage crush. I was fourteen when my sister, dad, and I would watch “Alias Smith and Jones”!! I was lucky to watch it each week probably due to my excitement! Pete Duel was handsome with his smile, laugh, the confident air he played as Hannibal Heyes. Liked wnen he was in the love story role!! Loved the start of the show with the narrator’s voice, zoomed in on Duel’s face, and riding toward train. TRUE, he made the show!!! Too bad he was hard on himself, and had alcohol problem. I remember reading in TV guide about his death,bio, with nice pic of Duel looking over while sitting in rocking chair. Did not care for Roger Davis… like Dick Sargeant replacing Dick York! Love watching Smith & Jones reruns. Thanks for story, I know full story now.
I was about 12 when Alias Smith and Jones first aired. I was madly in love with Pete Duel and vividly remember hearing the noon news broadcast of his death. And the video of him eating an ice cream cone, as I went outside to the backyard to cry. I loved everything about the series, the horses and the cowboys and all of the characters each week. But to lose Pete broke my heart. I hope that his spirit is in a better place now. RIP.
I have been watching the old series Alias Smith and Jones and started thinking about Pete Deuel and Ben. I remember how affected I was when I heard of his sad death. I was 5 and 6 where the show was on and it was my favorite. I am still sad thinking of what could have been and life not finished. Who knows why he decided to do that on that early morning. He is still thought about this many years later and will not be forgotton. Just wish he was here to enjoy the fact that so many people have never forgotton him. I never even knew him personally.
Depression is an awful thing and coupled with alcohol, devastating. I remember when this all happened and even then thinking wow, he was so good-looking, a TV star, seemed to have it all, why would he do this? I was very young at the time but now that I’m MUCH older I realize that Depression and alcohol don’t mix. Either or can get you into a lot of trouble and there is treatment and counseling but only if one wants it. I am glad I was not cursed to suffer either malady. Just watched an Alias Smith and Jones today on TV. Duel had so much going for him. Can’t believe it’s been 48 years ago that he passed away or will be at the end of this year (2019). He’d be 79 years old today had he not taken his own life. Such a shame.
Heath Ledger, Robin Williams, Freddie Prinze, John Belushi, James Dean, and the endless river of corpses flows eternally and ever onward and into the graveyards and gutters and oceans of tears and tragic biographies read and unread and always asking the same questions over and over and always wondering why and “how could it be?” when the answers are always the same….always sharp and jagged and clear and painfully understood and repeating themselves over and over like a dedicated ghost banging loudly against the walls of a gilded and very large and very expensive haunted house…and still the naive occupants come to claim the property, the status, the image, the immediate “companions” and “friends” and “lovers” and of course the appearances….the APPEARANCES….of success, happiness, abundance, spiritual and emotional bliss thrown out before the public for all to see, to envy, to aspire to, to embrace and believe like Santa Claus all those golden magazine dreams given the Good Housekeeping Seal Of Approval and held out before every child like the proverbial stick that pretends to be the oxygen of a meaningful and satisfactory existence…and it is all an illusion. An illusion that the hand that pulls the trigger, overdoses on the drug, ties the noose, or wants to create the final goodbye note is sensitive enough and in turmoil enough to know deep inside is the grand illusion that he or she has been knowingly collaborative in propagating, when having wanted nothing more pure and desperate and innocent in life than to have remained steadfast towards only this: TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE, and all but unknown and worthless to anyone except one’s own personal and private heart and soul.
Alias Smith and Jones was my favorite TV show when I was in High School and I was very sad when I heard on the news, that Pete Duel had shot himself. I’ll never forget the date, Dec 31, 1971. That was the same day my brother was killed in a hunting accident. He was only 15. I still feel so badly for Pete’s family as I can understand what they went through. My brother was my best friend. We were the “big” kids and my sister and younger brother were the “little” kids. I also remember when Roger Davis took over the role of Hannibal Heyes. He was also a very good actor, but it’s so hard to replace a favorite actor on such a successful tv show. I recently saw the the TV network, INSP is now running “ALIAS SMITH AND JONES” in their lineup. I was really happy about that but it’s on in the morning and I’ve never been a morning person. R.I.P. Pete, you are still missed.
I was 10 and 11 when Alias Smith and Jones was on. It was one of my favorite shows. I remember that one of my close friends called me to tell me that Peter Duel was dead, she was crying. I was shocked.
How was that possible? He was young and handsome and had a great TV show. As an older and wiser person, I now finally sort of understand. It still is such a shame and sad that he felt he had no future hope. I was diagnosed with major depression about 17 years ago and learned that alcohol is a depressant which of course only deepens depression. I wish things had been different and that more help had been available back then.
I loved alias smith and jones i was 6 or 7 when it first came on. Me and my older brother would watch it. Pete duel was cool on the show he was really funny. Him and ben murphy. Too bad he is gone i didnt know till years later that he killed himself! I was only 7 when he shot himself. Pete had everything going for him the drink got to him that night.
So sad still. I was 10 when this happened born and raised in the UK, this series was a phenomenal success there, we’d all rush home to watch it and record on the old cassette recorders. Pete was my first crush, my heart forever changed as I experienced “love” for the very first time. I still adore him, even more so now as I’ve grown and learned so much more about him as a human being, certainly not just a handsome face💔
I was devastated when he died, being only 13 and madly in love with him. I firmly believe on any other given night he would not have killed himself. Life just got the better of him at that moment. He would have went on to be a star in movies like he wanted, he just didn’t give himself a chance.
I adored Pete, he was my teenage crush, and I was so saddened to learn he had died. He could I’m sure have gone on to be a very successful serious actor, and it is one of the great tragedy’s that he ended his own life. To this day I have a serious soft spot for him, and hope he is at peace. Julie (England )
I’m 75 now but saw a program on YouTube and remembered an encounter with Pete Duel in 1962 the year I came to NYC but the strange thing that I recollect is afterward his writing his name and phone number on a slip of paper but it was spelled differently
‘Alias Smith and Jones’ was my favorite show growing up. I was 13 or 14 yrs of age and loved watching the series with Ben Murphy and Pete Duel. Today, I was flipping through the channels and saw, ‘The Day They Hanged Kid Curry’ was on, starring Peter Duel and Ben Murphy. I remembered watching the series when I was young, so I turned it on. The memories flooded back…how much I loved watching the series, reading articles about them in the teen magazines, and how handsome I thought the lead actors were. After it had finished, I googled the 2 actors…Pete died 1971, I had forgotten, and suddenly remembered reading about it back then, and how upset I was to think he had killed himself. So much talent and life to live wasted, so sad. Glad I was able to see the show again today, and remember how much I enjoyed watching those 2 actors on the series. Wish it had turned out differently for him….
Favorite western series..alias smith and jones..was.the greatest!!!…
He came from career people (a physician father and a nurse mother). I also feel the way you do, that nothing is worth killing yourself over. He must have been drinking and that sometimes make you very depressed. We are lucky that we are not that type of people. He probably should have been seeing a psychiatrist about how to deal with his problems. Too bad because he was a charming guy it seemed.
I also sat by our only TV about ten minutes before “Alias Smith and Jones” started so my sisters or mother wouldn’t be able to watch their programs. I was in love with Pete and was shocked when he died. The show was not the same. It needed the chemistry of Pete and Ben..I still watched the program, but it was not the same. I didn’t know Pete but you could tell he was a special person. Both of them were very attractive, especially to a young girl. I met Ben Murphy years later at a celebrity tennis tournament in Maui. I asked him for his autograph and got it. We also took a picture. Alcohol was probably a huge factor in his taking his life, and it sounded like he felt trapped in this acting job. What a loss. At that time, the 60’s and early 70’s there were a lot of westerns on TV, but this was a light type of western. I grew up with Bonanza, Gunsmoke, etc.
I loved alias smith and Jones , years later l managed to talk with Geoffrey deul. On the phone! And l he was lovely he said l made his day someone from england remembering him and Pete!!!. I made a point not mentioning Pete much l did not want to get Geoffrey all upset again. I don’t know what l would have done if l had been able to speak to Pete!!faint perhaps!!!.
This was my favorite show at the age of 6 and 7 years. My grandmother had a hotel on the border of Oregon and California on 101 on the coast .The hotel only had six rooms but when me and my sisters faught to watch tv I would have to find another TV to watch my favorite show if there was a vacancy my grandma would allow me to watch in a vacant room . My grandma before she passed away always talked about how I would always say grandma I want to watch Smith and Jones , it was such a joy until that day when Pete was gone and I lost interest because it wasn’t the same and it never ever could be . So I just want to say today Pete it’s still missed and the wonderful things that he could’ve done but I still think he is where he is today .
As a boy I loved “Alias Smith and Jones”. I was aware at the time of my father’s childhood freindship with Peter Deuel. I had boyhood dreams of meeting Pete and getting an acting carreer, though I had never mentioned this to my dad. I never did pursue acting, Pete’s death has always stuck with me. I didn’t find out until a few years ago that Pete had a brother when my dad and I were talking about Pete and his death. My dad didn’t even think I had remembered it. I guess he never knew how much it meant to me. RIP
My dad and I would watch “Alias Smith and Jones” together. Thank you for the body of work. He did not watch much television, but worked all the time. We would watch the weekly episodes and he would laugh at the subtle comedy. He liked the horses, scenery, trains, and the characters’ struggle that things did not always go their way. Thanks again.
It may be as I have read, Pete Duel had a string of failures. The possibility of his acting career failing with falling TV ratings may have been overwhelming. I can get it because I’ve failed many more times then I ever had success. At times, it’s as if the world has turned against you. The one big difference between Pete & myself though is this. For me, it”s just so what. It is what it is. Live with it. Pete was’t that easy going with himself. To fail in his career just wasn’t an option.