January 16 - Roger Mobley

On this day, in 1949, Roger Lance Mobley was born in Evansville, Indiana. The son of a pipefitter and a real estate agent, Roger was one of eight Mobley children. A few years after his birth, the family moved to Pecos, Texas. While there, Roger performed with his older brother and one of their sisters in a singing group called The Little Mobley Trio. When Roger was seven, the family moved to Los Angeles, California and the Trio appeared on Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour. The group failed to impress but an agent took notice of Roger and signed him. His first gig was on the NBC series Fury, a western that also starred Peter Graves (of Mission: Impossible fame). After 39 episodes of Fury, his career was on its way.

Image copyright Disney

Roger spent the next several years appearing on dozens of television shows, mostly westerns like The Virginian and Gunsmoke. He also began getting small roles in a handful of films. In 1964, Roger was cast as Gustav in Disney's version of Emil and the Detectives. Walt was so taken with his performance that he signed Roger to play the title role in a series being developed for the Wonderful World of Color, "Adventures of Gallegher". Gallegher is an amateur sleuth/newspaper reporter and the series of episodes earned an Emmy nomination. It seemed that Roger was destined for even bigger things. In the last known memo that Walt ever wrote, about future television projects, Roger is mentioned in connection with a show centering around the CIA. Unfortunately, the US government had other plans for him.

Image courtesy imdb.com

At the age of 18, Roger was drafted into the United States Army. He completed parachute jump training at Fort Benning, volunteered for Special Forces training at Fort Bragg and was assigned to the 46th Special Forces Company (Airborne) in Thailand. When the Green Beret returned to the States in 1970, he found out that he only had about $6,000 dollars left of all the money he'd made as a child actor. With a young bride (his high school sweetheart no less) and the beginnings of a family, Roger made the decision to move to Texas and become a police officer.

His acting career was effectively over, but not completely over. He would make two more cameo appearances: in 1979 in Disney's The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again as Sentry #1 and as a police sergeant in a 1980 Disney made for television movie, The Kids Who Knew Too Much. He was last known to live in Arkansas, still married to his sweetheart, occasionally making appearances at comic cons, ready to great his fans.