Ralph Waite
Birthday: Born in 1928-06-22 in White Plains, New York, USA
Deathday: 2014-02-13
Ralph Waite (June 22, 1928 – February 13, 2014) was an American actor. His most famous role may be John Walton Sr. on the 1970s CBS TV series The Waltons, which he occasionally directed. He is also well known for his portrayal of the slave ship first mate Slater in the mini-series Roots. Later in his career, he appeared as Reverend Norman Balthus for 16 out of 24 episodes over the two seasons of the HBO series Carnivàle (2003–2005). He portrayed the recurring roles of Father Matt on the daytime serial Days of our Lives, of Jethro Gibbs's (Mark Harmon) father, Jackson Gibbs, on NCIS and of Seeley Booth's (David Boreanaz) grandfather, Hank Booth on Bones.
TV Credits
Carnivàle
Character: Norman Belthus
Carnivàle is an American television series set in the United States during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. In tracing the lives of two disparate groups of people, its overarching story depicts the battle between good and evil and the struggle between free will and destiny; the storyline mixes Christian theology with gnosticism and Masonic lore, particularly that of the Knights Templar....
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Character: Sheriff Montgomery
A Las Vegas team of forensic investigators are trained to solve criminal cases by scouring the crime scene, collecting irrefutable evidence and finding the missing pieces that solve the mystery....
The Waltons
Character: John Walton Sr.
The Waltons live their life in a rural Virginia community during the Great Depression and World War II....
Roots
Character:
The epic tale of celebrated Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley's ancestors as portrayed in the acclaimed twelve hour mini-series Roots, was first told in his 1976 bestseller Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The docu-drama covers a period of history that begins in mid-1700s Gambia, West Africa and concludes during post-Civil War United States, over 100 years later. This 1977 miniseries eventually won 9 Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, and a Peabody award, and still stands as the mos...
The Outer Limits
Character: Gene Morton
Anthology series of composed of distinct story episodes, sometimes with a plot twist at the end, with occasional recurring story elements that were often tied together during season-finale clip shows....
The Mississippi
Character: Ben Walker
The Mississippi was a television series which ran for 2 seasons from 1982 to 1984. The series consisted of 27 episodes, 1 pilot, 6 first season episodes and 17 episodes in the second season. The series was written by Aubrey Solomon and starred Ralph Waite, Linda Miller and Stan Shaw. Ralph Waite played Ben Walker, a successful criminal attorney who after retiring his law practice, sought a more simple life on the mighty Mississippi river as a simple stern-wheel river boat captain. But at every p...
NCIS
Character: Jackson Gibbs
From murder and espionage to terrorism and stolen submarines, a team of special agents investigates any crime that has a shred of evidence connected to Navy and Marine Corps personnel, regardless of rank or position....
Nichols
Character: Sam Burton
Nichols is an American Western television series starring James Garner broadcast in the United States on NBC during the 1971-72 season. Set the fictional town of Nichols, Arizona, in 1914, Nichols differed from traditional Western series of the era. The main character, a sheriff, rode on a motorcycle and in an automobile rather than on the traditional horse. The hero did not carry a firearm and was generally opposed to the use of violence to solve problems, preferring other means. Margot Kidder ...
Bonanza
Character: Hoby Miles
The High-Sierra adventures of Ben Cartwright and his sons as they run and defend their ranch while helping the surrounding community....
The Third Twin
Character: Senator Proust
A biologist falls for a twin she is studying and confronts a scientist with evidence on a cloning scandal....
Reading Rainbow
Character: Himself - Narrator (voice)
Journey to exciting places and build a lasting connection with your favorite books. Each episode centers on a theme from a book, or other children's literature, which is explored through a number of segments or stories....
Grey's Anatomy
Character: Irving Waller
Follows the personal and professional lives of a group of doctors at Seattle’s Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital....
The Mike Douglas Show
Character: Self
The Mike Douglas Show is an American daytime television talk show hosted by Mike Douglas that originally aired only in the Cleveland area during much of its first two years on the air. It then went into syndication in 1963 and remained on television until 1982. It was distributed by Westinghouse Broadcasting and for much of its run, originated from studios of two of the company's TV stations in Cleveland and Philadelphia....
The West
Character: Self (voice)
The West, sometimes marketed as Ken Burns Presents: The West, is a documentary film about the American Old West. It was directed by Stephen Ives and the executive producer was Ken Burns. The film originally aired on PBS in September 1996....
Bones
Character: Hank Booth
Dr. Temperance Brennan and her colleagues at the Jeffersonian's Medico-Legal Lab assist Special Agent Seeley Booth with murder investigations when the remains are so badly decomposed, burned or destroyed that the standard identification methods are useless....
Roots
Character: Slater
The epic tale of celebrated Pulitzer-prize winning author Alex Haley's ancestors as portrayed in the acclaimed twelve hour mini-series Roots, was first told in his 1976 bestseller Roots: The Saga of an American Family. The docu-drama covers a period of history that begins in mid-1700s Gambia, West Africa and concludes during post-Civil War United States, over 100 years later. This 1977 miniseries eventually won 9 Emmy awards, a Golden Globe award, and a Peabody award, and still stands as the mos...
Dinah!
Character: Self
Dinah's show premiered 9 September 1974 and continued through to 4 September 1981. She started out the 70's with Dinah's Place which usually featured one guest and was more of a home oriented show about cooking, crafts and occasionally music. This format lasted until May of 1974. When the show came back in October of 1974 the format had changed drastically to a variety talk show which was called Dinah. and went on until 1981. This show was also known as "Dinah and Friends" during the summer of 1...
Shannon's Deal
Character: Harry
Shannon's Deal is an American legal drama. The show centers on a successful Philadelphia corporate lawyer named Jack Shannon, who lost his family and his job to a compulsive gambling habit. The saga of Shannon, who leaves a prestigious law firm after years of becoming unhappy with the legal system and being forced to take his clients to court, and whom subsequently opens his own low-rent practice...
Time Trax
Character: Lamont Carson
Time Trax is an American/Australian co-produced science fiction television series that first aired in 1993. A police officer, sent through time into the past, has to track down and return convicted criminals who have escaped prison in the future. This was the last new production from Lorimar Television....
Murder, She Wrote
Character: D.A. Paul Robbins
An unassuming mystery writer turned sleuth uses her professional insight to help solve real-life homicide cases....
The Practice
Character: Walter Josephson
A provocative legal drama focused on young associates at a bare-bones Boston firm and their scrappy boss, Bobby Donnell. The show's forte is its storylines about “people who walk a moral tightrope.”...
Movie Credits
The Bodyguard
Character: Herb Farmer
A former Secret Service agent grudgingly takes an assignment to protect a pop idol who's threatened by a crazed fan. At first, the safety-obsessed bodyguard and the self-indulgent diva totally clash. But before long, all that tension sparks fireworks of another sort, and the love-averse tough guy is torn between duty and romance....
Trouble Man
Character: Pete Cockrell
It seems that masked men are knocking over the floating crap games of Chalky and Pete. Chalky and Pete hire the cool, loose, elegant Mr. T to fix things. Then, the masked manipulators set up the death of a collector for a rival gang lord. It looks like it's up to T to hold a gang war from breaking out, keep the police off his back, and earn his fee from Chalky and Pete....
Crash and Burn
Character: Lathan Hooks
Unicom is a powerful organization overseeing most of the world after its economic collapse. They have banned computers and robots in an attempt to insure "life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic stability". When a Unicom Synth robot infiltrates a southwest TV station and kills the manager, a revolutionary against the gestapo-like corporation, a lowly Unicom delivery man must help the rest of the station survive through the incoming "thermal storm"....
Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco
Character: Shadow (voice)
When the pets accidentally get separated from their vacationing owners, Chance, Shadow, and Sassy navigate the mean streets of San Francisco, trying to find their home across the Golden Gate Bridge. But the road is blocked by a series of hazards, both man and beast....
Cliffhanger
Character: Frank
A year after losing his friend in a tragic 4,000-foot fall, former ranger Gabe Walker and his partner, Hal, are called to return to the same peak to rescue a group of stranded climbers, only to learn the climbers are actually thieving hijackers who are looking for boxes full of money....
Chato's Land
Character: Elias Hooker
In 1870s New Mexico, a half-breed kills a bigoted sheriff in self-defense but the posse that eventually hunts him finds itself in dangerous territory....
Letters to God
Character: Mr. Perryfield
A young boy fighting cancer writes letters to God, touching lives in his neighborhood and inspiring hope among everyone he comes in contact. An unsuspecting substitute postman, with a troubled life of his own, becomes entangled in the boy's journey and his family by reading the letters. They inspire him to seek a better life for himself and his own son he's lost through his alcohol addiction....
Lawman
Character: Jack Dekker
While passing through the town of Bannock, a bunch of drunken cattlemen go overboard with their celebrating and accidentally kill an old man with a stray shot. They return home to Sabbath unaware of his death. Bannock lawman Jered Maddox later arrives there to arrest everyone involved on a charge of murder. Sabbath is run by land baron Vince Bronson, a benevolent despot, who, upon hearing of the death, offers restitution for the incident....
The Magnificent Seven Ride!
Character: Jim Mackay
Marshal Chris Adams turns down a friend's request to help stop the depredations of a gang of Mexican bandits. When his wife is killed by bank robbers and his friend is killed capturing the last thief, Chris feels obligated to take up his friend's cause and recruits a writer and five prisoners to destroy the desperadoes.The last in the original series of four "Magnificent Seven" movies....
Ace Ventura Jr: Pet Detective
Character: Grandpa Ventura
"I will try to be normal" 12-year-old Ace Ventura Jr. promises. Thats cool, except whats normal for him is finding missing mutts, kidnapped kitties or gone gators and creating hilarious chaos every step of the way....
Last Summer
Character: Peter's father (uncredited)
During summer vacation on Fire Island, three young people become very close. When an uncool girl tries to infiltrate the trio's newly found relationship, they construct an elaborate plot that has violent results....
Timequest
Character: The Traveler
A story about a man who travels back in time to Fort Worth, Texas on Novemeber 22, 1963 and prevents the assassination of President John F. Kennedy....
Mother's Day on Waltons Mountain
Character: John Walton
Mary Ellen marries Jonesy but they don't exactly have a good start....
A Day for Thanks on Waltons Mountain
Character: John Walton
Most of the Waltons have split up in the days approaching Thanksgiving 1947. But most of the family begins to arrive at Walton's Mountain begging with John-Boy recovering from a case of writers block in New York followed by Jason now a struggling musician as well as John Walton whom tries to get everyone together for the special event for Elizabeth, while newlyweds Erin and Paul plan to move out of the Walton homestead....
Hot Summer Week
Character: John
Two girls pick up a crazed hitchhiker who may or may not be the serial killer murdering hippies in the area....
Gabe the Cupid Dog
Character: R.L. Dutton
When Eric and Marsha break off their long-term relationship, journalist Eric is able to weather it pretty well. He still has his long time canine companion Gabe, and his boss, Ms Andrews, wants to send him to London to open an office. But first Ms Andrews says Eric must find out the true identity of the best-selling author R L Dutton. A bigger obstacle for Eric's trip, however, comes from his dog. Gabe does not want to face six months in quarantine with big pit bulls and mastiffs waiting for an ...
Kid Blue
Character: Drummer
Bickford Waner, an apparently naive young man from Fort Worth, arrives in the tiny Texas town of Dime Box and takes on a variety of menial jobs. He's befriended by Reese Ford and his wife Molly, but before long Molly has seduced Bickford. Only with the arrival of Bickford's former girlfriend Janet Conforto is it revealed that Bickford is actually the notorious train robber Kid Blue. Humiliated by a scandal arising from his affair with his friend's wife, Bickford gives up on going straight and pl...
Sparks: The Price of Passion
Character: Orville Lemon
A female mayor (Victoria Principal) of Albuquerque gets embroiled in a fight over the development of a new economic center. In the midst of this, she receives blackmail photos of an overnight fling she had with a stranger and threats of blackmail. On top of all this, the city is under siege by a serial killer who hunts powerful women. When the FBI moves in for the investigation, the chief officer (Ted Wass) turns out to be the stranger. Ralph Waite shows up as a friend of the mayor pressuring he...
Red Alert
Character: Henry Stone
A computer at a nuclear power plant malfunctions and receives erroneous information of a radiation leak. It seals off the compound, trapping the crew inside....
The Sporting Club
Character: Olson
The wealthy members of an exclusive backwoods retreat face an existential threat from both a disgruntled former manager as well as a subversive, anarchistic current member....
Five Easy Pieces
Character: Carl Fidelio Dupea
A drop-out from upper-class America picks up work along the way on oil-rigs when his life isn't spent in a squalid succession of bars, motels, and other points of interest....
Generation Gap
Character: Chick
When a rebellious teenager is forced to spend the summer with his grandfather, their differences go deeper than just the years that separate them....
The Stone Killer
Character: Mathews
A Los Angeles detective is sent to New York where he must solve a case involving an old Sicilian Mafia family feud....
A Wedding on Waltons Mountain
Character: John Walton
Erin Walton is considering marrying her boyfriend Paul but her old boyfriend Ashley, who left for the war and married someone else, lived through his wife's death and would like to get Erin back, but Paul is not going to give her up so easily. Also Mary Ellen's boyfriend Jonesy who's a veterinarian is trying to establish a practice but everybody doesn't think he is competent. And Ben who has been minding the lumber business while their father's with their ailing mother in Arizona is having some ...
A Good Sport
Character: Tommy O'Bannon
The stylish editor of a fashion magazine and a rumpled sports reporter endeavor to keep their somewhat offbeat romance on a purely platonic level....
Spirit
Character: Jacob Hardesty
When Kelly and her father move to New Orleans after the death of her mother, strange things start happening in their new home. Kelly is convinced that the house is haunted by a ghost who needs her help. Her father does not believe her, so she enlists her friend Cole to help discover the truth....
Blessings
Character: Sheriff
Released from jail after a term basically served instead of friends he refused to rat out, Charles 'Skip' Cuddy is grateful his gentleman instinct gets him a job with living quarters as handyman on a semi-destitute estate Blessings. Working hard, he wins further confidence from the owner, bitter widow Lydia Blessing, unlike her in-living bitch nurse Jennifer. When a baby is left at the state, Skip takes it in and secretly cares for it. Lydia eventually finds out but sides with him, feeling robbe...
The Grissom Gang
Character: Mace
The Grissom Gang is a remake of the notorious 1949 British melodrama No Orchids For Miss Blandish. Kim Darby plays a 1920s-era debutante who is kidnapped and held for ransom. Her captors are the Grissoms, a family comprised of sadists and morons, and headed by Ma Barker clone Irene Dailey. One of the Grissoms, played by Scott Wilson, takes a liking to his prisoner, which results in a bloody breakdown of the family unit. Both The Grissom Gang and the original No Orchids For Miss Blandish were ins...
A Season of Hope
Character: Sam Hackett
When trees in their only source of income, a lemon grove, start showing signs of disease, a burdened Californian family reaches their breaking point. Is there any hope left for them?...
A Lovely Way to Die
Character: Sean Magruder
A cop quits the force after too much disappointment in the system. He becomes a bodyguard of a rich recent widow. She is on trial for her husband's murder. He decides to help her clear her name... and get over her husband....
Angel City
Character: Jared Teeter
Jared Teeter has to work in a forced labor camp in Florida to make ends meet. "Angel City" is no place for the faint of heart....
Sioux City
Character: Drew McDermott
A young Lakota Sioux, adopted by a wealthy Jewish couple in Beverly Hills, gets in touch with his cultural roots and solves a mystery in this thriller....
Cool Hand Luke
Character: Alibi
When petty criminal Luke Jackson is sentenced to two years in a Florida prison farm, he doesn't play by the rules of either the sadistic warden or the yard's resident heavy, Dragline, who ends up admiring the new guy's unbreakable will. Luke's bravado, even in the face of repeated stints in the prison's dreaded solitary confinement cell, "the box," make him a rebel hero to his fellow convicts and a thorn in the side of the prison officers....
The President's Man
Character: President Mathews
To many, Joshua McCord is a charismatic Asian studies professor. To the President of the United States, he's America's greatest secret weapon; a covert operative charged with only the most sensitive and dangerous missions....
A Walton Thanksgiving Reunion
Character: John Walton
The fourth Waltons reunion TV movie is set in the 1960s , with John-Boy still living in New York, trying to persuade his fiancée to marry him. Meanwhile, Ben and Cindy's daughter Virginia has died, and Cindy is finding life very lonely without her. She tells Ben that she would dearly love to adopt another baby, but Ben feels that it is not a good idea. Ben argues with his father about buying a new truck for their lumber company, but John keeps insisting that they can't afford it. Elsewhere, Eri...
The Gentleman Bandit
Character: Father Bernard Pagano
Based on the real-life ordeal of Baltimore priest Bernard Pagano, who was accused of several armed robberies in the late Seventies....
25 Hill
Character: Ed
This is the story of an 11-year-old boy whose derby dreams are left in pieces when his soldier father is killed in Afghanistan. The boy teams up with a father figure whose own son, a firefighter, died in the line of duty, and the two help each other find redemption and revive the derby....
Keys
Character: Dr. C.J. Halligan
A one-time investigator gets back in the game when a family suffers a trauma similar to her own....
Silver City
Character: Casey Lyle
The discovery of a corpse and the ensuing probe by an idealistic journalist threatens to unravel a bumbling local politician's campaign for governor of Colorado....
A Walton Easter
Character: John Walton
In 1969, John-Boy is a TV news anchorperson in New York and he is in the throes of writing a new book. He and a very pregnant Janet are making plans to return to Walton's Mountain for the celebration of John and Olivia's 40th wedding anniversary. Accompanying them to see the place John-Boy lived as a child is Aurora, a Time magazine photographer, who is doing a story on John-Boy. Meanwhile, Elizabeth arrives back from her travels and announces to Drew, who is still working at the mill with Ben, ...
On the Nickel
Character: C.G.
Sam, a recovering alcoholic, feels dissatisfied with his life of sobriety and goes back in search of the good times he enjoyed with his wino friends on "the Nickel" of Los Angeles' skid row....
The Desperate Hours
Character: Lt. Fredericks
The Hilliards are a middle class family whose lives are put in danger when escaped convict Glenn Griffin invades their home. Griffin is crazed, tormenting the Hilliards with his meek brother Hank and sadistic Robish....
The Secret Life of John Chapman
Character: John Chapman
The true story of John Chapman, a college president who took a sabbatical and went out and got a job as a general laborer, to try to experience life outside his well-ordered but insulated college environment....
Sunshine State
Character: Furman Temple
A woman and her new husband returns to her hometown roots in coastal northern Florida, and must deal with family, business, and encroaching real estate development....
Murder 101: If Wishes Were Horses
Character: Jacob Brawley
Dr. Maxwell is called in to investigate the kidnapping of a prize race horse. When the case leads to murder, Maxwell and Detective Bryant suspect the horse's owner....
OHMS
Character: Floyd Wing
A conservative, Midwestern farmer rallies his neighbors against a power company planning to erect huge towers across their land, and a political activist schoolteacher helps them organize into an effective bloc....
Crime of Innocence
Character: Frank Hayward
Two teenage girls are locked up for a minor offence by a harsh judge who thinks a night in jail will do them good. It's a traumatizing experience that includes an assault. Afterwards, one of the girls and her family seek justice against an unfair legal system....
The Pursuit of Happiness
Character: Detective Cromie
William Popper is the son of a stockbroker and is thoroughly disenchanted with "the system." So much so that even though he can prove that he ran over a woman in his car entirely by accident, he accepts a sentence for manslaughter....
The Borgia Stick
Character: Man from Toledo
A suburban couple discovers that they are pawns for a powerful crime syndicate. They try to break away from the cartel and go legitimate, but the syndicate doesn't want to give them up so easily....
A Walton Wedding
Character: John Walton
In 1964, John-Boy Walton is planning his wedding to Janet Gilchrist, the editor of a New York fashion magazine and the daughter of a diplomat. The two of them plan a small wedding and he invites the family and friends from Walton's Mountain to come to New York for the celebration. However, Janet's Aunt Flo has other ideas and begins to take over their wedding preparations. Added to the wedding plan stress, John-Boy is also trying to write an article about his Grandma, but decides that he needs t...
A Natural Born World-Shaker: The Making of 'Cool Hand Luke'
Character: Self
A documentary on the making of 'Cool Hand Luke' (1967)....