Reed Hadley

Early life

Hadley was born Reed Herring in Petrolia, Texas, to Bert Herring, an oil well driller, and his wife Minnie. Hadley had one sister, Bess Brenner. He was reared in Buffalo, New York, where he attended and graduated from Bennett High School.

Career

Before moving to Hollywood, he acted in Hamlet on stage in New York City, a last-minute substitute for the scheduled actor who failed to appear to portray Fortinbras.

Radio

In the 1950s, Hadley played Chad Remington on Frontier Town. He also was one of the actors who portrayed cowboy hero Red Ryder on the Red Ryder series during the 1940s.

Television

Hadley starred in two television series, Racket Squad (1950–1953) as Captain Braddock, and The Public Defender (1954–1955) as Bart Matthews, a fictional attorney for the indigent. He also was a guest star on such programs as the religion anthology series, Crossroads, and on Rory Calhoun's CBS western series, The Texan. In 1959, he played fictitious Sheriff Ben Tildy in "The Sheriff of Boot Hill", with Denver Pyle cast as Joe Lufton.

Film

Throughout his 35-year career in film, Hadley was cast as both a villain and a hero of the law, in such movies as The Baron of Arizona (1950), The Half-Breed (1952), Highway Dragnet (1954) and Big House, U.S.A. (1955), and narrated a number of documentaries. In films, he starred as Zorro in the 1939 serial Zorro's Fighting Legion.

Hadley was the narrator of several Department of Defense films: Operation Ivy, about the first hydrogen bomb test, Ivy Mike, "Military Participation on Tumbler/Snapper"; "Military Participation on Buster Jangle"; and "Operation Upshot–Knothole" all of which were produced by Lookout Mountain studios. The films were originally intended for internal military use, but have been "sanitized" and de-classified, and are now available to the public.

In 1945 he narrated “The Nazi Plan”, a documentary film using captured propaganda and newsreel footage to dramatize the Nazis rise to power and was used by the prosecution in the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. He served as the narrator on various Hollywood films, including House on 92nd Street (1945), Boomerang (1947), and The Iron Curtain (1948).

Personal life

Hadley and his wife, Helen, had one son, Dale

Death

On December 11, 1974, Hadley died of a heart attack in Los Angeles. He was 63. He was survived by his wife and son.

Recognition

Hadley has a star at 6553 Hollywood Boulevard in the Television section of the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It was dedicated on February 8, 1960.