Scott Brady

Scott Brady was star of the syndicated series, Shotgun Slade. He owned a 20 percent share of the show, and admited "there's gold in saddles and spurs."
Shotgun Slade also delighted Brady, bachelor  at 37, because each week he was surrounded by luscious-looking women. And like his TV character, Brady felt "staying single had its advantages." One of them: freedom to pursue his career seriously. He got out of the "B" picture rut by tackling diversified roles in the summer stock productions of Picnic and Detective Story. In 1959 he starred on Broadway in the hit musical Destry Rides Again, before starting Shotgun Slade.
This 6'3", 180-pound detective-on-horseback started life as a subway rider in Brooklyn. "My father was head of the protection division of the Catskill Delaware Aqueduct before he retired," he explained. He was very exact about that billing. He got mad if anyone called him anything else—like an Irish cop. 
Born Gerard Tierney, Brady and his brothers, Lawrence and Ed, were veterans before the camera. Ed acted as Brady's stand-in during Slade's two-day shooting schedule, but devotes the rest of his time to real estate. He took his acting name from the prize fighter he played in his first movie, Born to Fight, in 1953.
To keep in shape for his TV role —"I play Slade as a rugged two- fisted guy with a sense of humor," he said—he played handball and worked out in a gym regularly.
Hard-living Brady studied acting under the G.I. Bill in California after World War II. Discovered in a dramatic school's plays by an agent, he wound up under contract to two movie studios.
What distinguished his Slade from other TV western heroes? "His gun was over and under," Brady explains. "The underneath part was a shotgun, and the over part was a rifle. Generally someone was trying to get the gun away from him."