Actor Jack Ging
When Alva-born Jack Ging was inducted into the Oklahoma Movie Hall of Fame in 2021, the Alva Review-Courier published the story and mentioned he was born here. He sent an email saying he was surprised people in Alva remembered him.
Ging, 90, died of natural causes in his residence in La Quinta, California, on Sept. 9, 2022, his wife, Apache, told the Hollywood Reporter. He was born in Alva on Nov. 30, 1931. He went to boarding school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps. Then he played halfback on the University of Oklahoma football team, helping the Sooners beat the top-ranked University of Maryland in the 1954 Orange Bowl. He also played one season for the Canadian Football League's Edmonton Eskimos.
Ging studied with Sanford Meisner in New York to learn acting skills. In 1958 he appeared on episodes of Mackenzie's Raiders and Highway Patrol and the film Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!
Ging did most of his work on television, guest-starring on episodes of "Bat Masterson," "The Roaring '20s," "The Twilight Zone," "Perry Mason," "Gunsmoke," "Bonanza," "Hawaii 5-0," "Fantasy Island," "Barnaby Jones," "The Greatest American Hero," "The Fall Guy," "Little House on the Prairie" and "Wings."
He was probably best known for his role as Gen. Harlan "Bull" Fullbright on NBC's "The A-Team." That role ended when the general took a bullet in the back. In the mid-'80s, he portrayed a cop, Ted Quinlan, on the NBC detective series "Riptide" over three seasons.
Ging starred in a remake of "Tess of the Storm Country" (1960) as the love interest of Diane Baker's character, in "Sniper's Ridge" (1961) as a soldier and reluctant hero, and in the 1962-64 NBC medical series "The Eleventh Hour" as a clinical psychiatrist. He appeared in three films with Clint Eastwood: as a marshal in "Hang 'Em High" (1968), a doctor in "Play Misty for Me" (1971) and the doomed outlaw Morgan Allen in "High Plains Drifter" (1973).
Ging's other movie credits include "Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow" (1959), Raymond Burr's "Desire in the Dust" (1960), Fred Williamson's "That Man Bolt" (1973), "Sssssss" (1973), "Where the Red Fern Grows" (1974) and "Die Sister, Die!" (1978).
He met Apache, also an Oklahoman, while filming "Where the Red Fern Grows" in the state in 1973, and they were married in 1978. Survivors include his children, Adam, Casey, Erin, Charlie and Anna, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
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