The Athletic Dennis Weaver

I think I've briefly written about Dennis Weaver on this blog before but only to comment in a general way about his fame as an actor and the fact that he was from Joplin and has a street named after him here. One thing I did not comment on was the fact that, when he was in high school and junior college in Joplin in the early forties, he was known as a good athlete. I had read this somewhere once before, but I recently ran across a newspaper article that shows he was more than just good--he was an outstanding athlete.

After starring at Joplin High and Joplin Junior High, Weaver entered military service and became a fighter pilot during World War II. When the war ended, he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma as a drama student. At the same time, he also resumed his participation in sports as a track athlete.

In the spring of 1947, Weaver, who was then known as Bill (having not yet adopted the name Dennis), competed for Oklahoma in the decathlon at the Kansas Relays. At the end of the first day, encompassing the first five events, Weaver was in second place with 3,610 points. His strongest events the first day were the high jump, where he cleared six feet, two and a half inches, and the quarter mile, which he ran in 51.3 seconds.

The second day, Weaver won the 1,500-meter race in a time of 4:32.8 and placed third overall in the final standings after all ten events were completed. Weaver's best finishes were maybe not world-class, but they were pretty darn good for a college decathlete in the 1940s. This is especially true considering that Weaver had apparently trained very little for the decathlon. The Joplin Globe reported that many of the events in the decathlon were "total strangers" to Weaver but that he had decided to "give it a whirl anyhow."

The same report noted that, during his time as a drama student at the University of Oklahoma, Weaver had played leading roles in "Kiss and Tell," "Uncle Harry," "The Late George Apley," and "Private Lives." As soon as the school term was over, Weaver had plans to move to New York City with his wife, the former Gerrie Stowell of Joplin, to further his drama training. He would, of course, go on to become famous for his roles in such TV series as Gunsmoke, Gentle Ben, and McCloud, as well as roles in a number of movies.