Frank McGrath (actor)

Benjamin Franklin McGrath, known as Frank McGrath , was an American television actor who played the comical and optimistic cook with the white beard, Charlie B. Wooster, on the Western television series Wagon Train on, first, NBC and then ABC. McGrath appeared in all 272 episodes in the eight seasons of the series, which had ended its run only two years before his death. McGraths Wooster character hence provided the meals and companionship for both fictional trailmasters, Ward Bond as Seth Adams and John McIntire as Christopher Chris Hale.

McGrath was born in Mound City in Holt County in far northwestern Missouri. McGraths first role, uncredited, was in the 1932 film The Rainbow Trail, a study of Mormon polygamy based on a 1915 Zane Grey novel of the same name. He was also a stunt performer. Even at the age of fiftythree, the durable McGrath did three separate horse fall and drag scenes for the 1956 John Wayne picture The Searchers not long after McGrath had barely recovered from having broken his back. A year before Wagon Train began, McGrath appeared briefly as ranch foreman John Pike in the 1956 episode Quicksand of the first hourlong television western series, ABCs Cheyenne, starring Clint Walker. In 1957, McGrath had an uncredited role as a stagecoach driver in the Henry Fonda film, The Tin Star. In 1958, he portrayed the character Jake Rivers in the episode The Most Dangerous Man Alive on NBCs Tales of Wells Fargo, starring Dale Robertson.

Source: Wikipedia