Baugh of the Movies

The football great Sammy Baugh has died. His enormous skill on the gridiron and his all-American good looks made him a national name while playing with the Washington Redskins starting in the late 1930s.

Hollywood saw potential and cast the Texas native in a cheapie Western serial at the start of World War II --in a plot that involves ranchers and ... Nazis??!! Crazy, to be sure, but not unusual. Filmmakers of the period updated Sherlock Holmes and Tarzan to battle the Third Reich.

Baugh did not go far in Hollywood. As one critic noted, he was no threat to Olivier. The movie trailer is here for Baugh's one and only role, in "King of the Texas Rangers":