For as long as American media has existed, so too has the allure of a Western. Stories set in the Wild West play an outsized role in the country’s self-mythology, and one of the genre’s favorite tropes is the duel between two opposing gunfighters. These duels often came down to one simple question: who was the fastest in the West? It turns out that few had the reflexes or mental sharpness of Nick Barkley, a character on the show The Big Valley played by Peter Breck.

Breck was one of many actors who learned to fire their weapons accurately in no time. But who was the quickest? It’s a question without a definitive answer.

Peter Breck played the young hothead in ‘The Big Valley’

The Big Valley took place in Stockton, California, from 1884 to 1888. The show followed the lives of the Barkley family. They were wealthy owners...

Reel-Important People is a monthly column that highlights those individuals in or related to the movies that have left us in recent weeks. Below you'll find names big and small and from all areas of the industry, though each was significant to the movies in his or her own way. Anna-Lisa (1933-2018) - Norwegian Actress. She was best known for TV's Black Saddle but she also appears in the sci-fi comedy films 12 to the Moon and Have Rocket -- Will Travel. She died on March 21. (Dagbladet) Stéphane Audran (1932-2018) - French Actress. She won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress for her performance in Luis Bunuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and received nominations for her work as the title character...

Russell Johnson, the actor best known as Professor Roy Hinkley on the seminal sitcom Gilligan's Island, died of natural causes this morning, TMZ reports. He was 89.

"Russell was a true gentleman, a good father, a great friend, and 'the rest,'" wrote his co-star Dawn Wells (Mary Ann) on Facebook, referencing the duo's initial absence from the Gilligan's theme song, where they were referred to as "the rest." (Star Bob Denver later demanded their names be included.) "I love him and shall miss him," Wells continued. "My heart goes out...

The actor best known for playing hot-headed Nick Barkley on The Big Valley TV series has died.

Peter Breck was 82 years old and died on Monday, February 6th. He passed away after a long illness in Vancouver, British Columbia, where he and his wife Diane were longtime residents. According to his widow, Breck had been in the hospital since January 10th.

Born in Rochester, NY, Breck served in the Us Navy and studied drama at the University of Houston. He appeared in several film and stage productions during his career, but worked mostly on the small screen.

He had recurring roles on Maverick and Black Saddle and guest-starred on dozens of others, like 77 Sunset Strip, Perry Mason, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Fantasy Island.

Breck took great pride in his work on The Big...

Mohammad Reza Moini and Mohammad Rasoulof

at La Cinémathèque française last September

"To be quite honest, I don't know what the current status of my sentence is," Mohammad Rasoulof tells Scott Lucas in an interview for EAWorldView. "For example, in the end, my friend Jafar Panahi, who was sentenced to six years in prison last year, only spent two months in jail. My own sentence has been reduced to one year, but for the time being I am still being issued with visas so I can attend festivals like Cannes and the Iffr. I have no idea what will happen next…. Iran is like an alcoholic father. You can't change your father, but I can see him hurting himself, myself and others. But I still love him."

More reading. David Lynch is "a religious or spiritual artist in the same loosely categoric sense that one might apply the term to William Blake or Tarkovsky,...

Actor Peter Breck (right, in Shock Corridor), best known for his role as the short-tempered Nick Barkley in the 1960s television series The Big Valley, died Monday, Feb. 6, in Vancouver. Breck, who had been suffering from dementia, was 82. Though mostly a TV actor (Black Saddle, Maverick, The Fall Guy), Breck also appeared in about 20 movies. The most notable among those was probably Samuel Fuller's thriller Shock Corridor (1963), in which he plays a journalist who commits himself to a mental institution in order to solve a murder. Additionally, Breck was featured in Joe Camp's blockbuster Benji (1974), about a stray dog who rescues two kidnapped children. Breck's other features were minor fare. Those included Herbert L. Strock's The Crawling Hand (1963), about the hand of a dead astronaut that spends its time strangling the living, plus Highway 61 (1991), Decoy (1995), Lulu (1996), and Jiminy Glick in Lalawood (2004). Breck is the third The Big Valley...