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A Forum for the Fans of
Albert Salmi

Albert Salmi as “Cletus Grogan” in the Laredo episode “Jinx” (Dec. 2, 1965).

Albert felt a responsibility to his audience, giving his roles everything he had so the viewers would come away satisfied. As a result, he had countless fans.

This page is dedicated to those fans. Here is what they have to say:

Lara Johnson:

Albert Salmi made a lifelong impression on me the very first time I saw him. He was on TV portraying a Native American. (In fact his character was White Horse, the naturalized Apache man in The High Chaparral episode “A man to match the land”.) I thought he was wonderful, and so handsome both in face and stature! His character was injured and had all my sympathy. A few years later when I began trying to learn Finnish, I realized straight away from his name that his family must have been from Finland. But it’s only this year that I finally read about him. What a marvelous actor and what a great, dear man. God bless him.

Klaus D. Haisch:

I remembered [Twilight Zone’s episode entitled] “Execution” from the first time I saw it. Up until that time, in all the Westerns I saw, mainly Lone Ranger reruns and Gunsmoke – it was always summertime in the Old West. I actually thought that the Old West was always sunny and hot, year ‘round. Kind of like an “endless summer”. It struck me when Caswell described his Old West of 1880 as a “frozen mesa” where he’d need another man’s coat to keep from freezing. Albert didn’t write those lines, but oh, the way he delivered them! I can honestly say that over the years, I had forgotten virtually every Western TV show I ever saw (maybe, if I happen to see a Lone Ranger episode on late night cable now, I might remember one scene) – but I remembered Albert’s performance as Caswell forever. Albert Salmi – Once you see his acting, you’ll never forget him.

Dale Kriner:

When I was a ten- or eleven-year-old kid, some friends and I heard that the TV show Route 66 would be shooting an episode in my hometown of Niagara Falls, NY. The most accessible place for us to reach on our bicycles was a trailer park in the LaSalle area of Niagara Falls. Albert Salmi was one of the guest stars, and I got his autograph. I also got the autograph of an actress [on the show]. That has been about forty years ago, but the one thing that sticks in my mind most about that day is that Salmi was very gracious about signing his autograph, whereas the actress was not.

Michael Schramm:

Albert is the one who completely immerses himself into the role. I think I understand now why so few people recognize him; he was just so versatile and seemed to surrender himself to the roles he portrayed that few of us recognize him or his name. He “became” so many people. Most of the other actors I’m familiar with seem to me to be portraying themselves in large measure.

Fred Beeman:

Albert was very good at eliciting emotion from the viewer. His sensitive portrayal of the Rafe character in The Virginian episode “A Little Learning” is a good example of this. Rafe was so downtrodden, so mercilessly teased by the townsfolk that the audience was moved to tears. I can attest to that fact. I, too, cried for his character, as did so many other viewers.

Ric Tester:

He was always very popular here in Australia. I was mesmerized by his performance. He paid great attention to the finest details of his performance – the eye movements, the subtle changes of facial expression and the body language were all so expertly reflective of the characters he portrayed.

Early in 1999, I played the role of baddie Jud Fry in the stage show Oklahoma. Traditionally, Jud has been done as a very one-dimensional, brutish character, but I thought that I would try to bring something new to the role. I thought “How would Albert Salmi have done this?” I looked at quite a few of his works on video . . . and then used my imagination and came up with a character who was bad, but who was still a human being. I did my best at copying Albert’s oft-used slow and deliberate speech pattern. The whole thing went quite well, judging from some of the positive comments I received.

Warren F. Hall:

I noticed and remembered him from his early film career in the late fifties to all of the TV movies he made in the eighties (even the silly ones he helped make watchable). . . I never got to see him act on a stage. That would have been a special experience. The man could make you feel. The man could make you care. Thank God we have so much of him on tape.

An anonymous fan:

When I was just a boy in late elementary school age, I used to watch Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone just about every episode. I LOVED that show! It was so far ahead of its time! I also LOVED westerns back then (mid 1950’s - early 60’s). But of all the episodes I watched through those years The T. Z. was on TV, one in particular etched into my mind and never left its indelible impression, because it combined both the fantastic (T. Z. material) and the western saga: of a man who, in the 1880’s, hung from a rope for killing another man, but just as he began dangling from the rope he disappeared, then reappeared alive on a cot in an office in New York City in 1960. I sat MESMERIZED watching this 1880’s cowboy terrified and nearly going crazy at all of the sights and sounds of “life in the big city” in the 2nd half of the 20th century. And I thought – WOW! what an idea for a show. Of course, that cowboy who was transported from the 1880’s to 1960 through the time machine shown in the show, was ALBERT SALMI!! But I never knew the title of that episode way back then (1960). But all through the years, after The T. Z. left the airwaves, I wondered and wondered who that guy was as that episode would periodically come back to my memory. Finally, only a year or two ago (2002 or 2003), I was in an electronics store looking at DVD movies and saw a special section on old TV series for sale. And there was The Twilight Zone series – a whole lot of them. So I took each and every volume off the shelf and read very, very closely and carefully each one’s description. When I saw the little picture of the Old West hanging and read the description, I KNEW this was the ONE! It was entitled, simply “Execution.” So I bought it, took it home, and put it on – and more than 40 years of waiting FINALLY came to an end! Now, when I have trouble sleeping at night, I go into the living room and put on “Execution” and go back into my own time machine, of sorts – 44 years back to 1960. And each time it begins, my imagination becomes as vivid and “child-like” at 56 now as I was at 11 or 12 when that episode first aired. I watch it over and over and over and still LOVE every second of it!

Mark Galindo:

I want to state officially that I believe Albert Salmi was the greatest actor of all time. We miss you, Albert.

If you’d like to add your memories of Albert to this page, please send them to Sandra Grabman at srgrabman@cableone.net. We always love to hear from his fans.

Spotlights & Shadows: The Albert Salmi Story, by Sandra Grabman, is available through these on-line booksellers:

BearManor Media
Cover Out
Amazon US
Amazon Kindle

An audio version of Spotlights & Shadows: The Albert Salmi Story is also available through BearManor Media and Audible.com.

With 7 hours and 15 chapters, including new information on Albert Salmi, and read by Michael Hoctor, the audio-book may be ordered by MP3 download.