Don Collier

Donald Mounger Collier (October 17, 1928 – September 13, 2021) was an American actor best known for Western films and NBC television shows such as The High Chaparral, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, and Outlaws as Marshal Will Foreman.

Early years Collier was born on October 17, 1928, in Santa Monica, California on the West Coast. and served in both the United States Navy and the Merchant Marine. After his naval service, Collier worked as an extra in a few films before attending small Baptist institution Hardin–Simmons College in Abilene, Texas, on an athletic scholarship. He did not return to college after his first year, but he later studied geology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

On television in several series, Collier portrayed ranch hand Sam Butler in The High Chaparral starring Leif Ericson, Cameron Mitchell, Henry Darrow, Mark Slade, Linda Cristal and Frank Silvera, set on the desert ranch in the old old Southwest and American frontier in the southern portion of the old Arizona Territory, near the U.S.-Mexican border in Apache Indian country, deputy Will Foreman in Outlaws, and William Tompkins in The Young Riders.

He also appeared in the two extended World War II historical epic miniseries The Winds of War (1983), and its sequel War and Remembrance (1988–1989), televised during the 1980s, based on the two earlier war / political historical fiction novels of the same titles in 1971, followed by the second in 1978, by acclaimed author Herman Wouk (1915–2019).

Personal life and death Collier's marriage to Holly Hire, a casting director, ended with her death earlier in 2012. They had four children together.