Roger Mobley

Roger Lance Mobley (born January 16, 1949, in Evansville, Indiana) was a busy child actor in the 1950s and 1960s who made more than one hundred television appearances and co-starred in nine feature films in a nine-year career.^[1] He joined the Green Berets (46th Special Forces Company) during the Vietnam War and was subsequently a police officer in Beaumont, Texas.^[1]

Background

Mobley is one of eight children of Arthur Lance Mobley (April 1, 1922 – August 24, 2002) and Charlene V. Mobley (July 23, 1924 – November 23, 2012). Lance Mobley, as the father was known, was born in Centralia in southern Illinois, and a retired pipefitter at the time of his death in a hospital in Beaumont, Texas. He and Charlene married in 1939, when he was seventeen, and she was fifteen.^[2] The couple moved from Indiana in the early 1950s to Pecos in Reeves County in West Texas before they headed in 1957 to Whittier, near Los Angeles, California.

Charlene Mobley was born in rural Oil City north of Shreveport in Caddo Parish in northwestern Louisiana. For many years she was a real estate agent in Beaumont and then Vidor, Texas. For most of her life, she was a lay preacher in various churches in the communities in which the Mobleys resided. The senior Mobleys are interred in Vidor at Restlawn Cemetery.^[3]

As of 2012, Roger Mobley had six living siblings, Joe Mobley and wife Patty of Sun City, California; Chuck Mobley and wife Betty Ann of Georgetown, Grand Cayman; Sandra Cook and husband Lee of Port Bolivar, Texas; Renée Mobley Timpeiro of Wichita, Kansas; Lynda Gaye Courtney of Vidor, Texas, and Tami Robichau of Conroe, Texas. Another sister, Linda Rae Mobley, is deceased.^[3]

Acting

Mobley (pronounced "Mob'-ly" in real life but "Mobe'-ly" as a performer at the behest of studio executives who disliked like the way the former sounds)^[4] sang with his older brother and sister in The Little Mobley Trio in Texas where the family then lived. After moving to California when Mobley was six or seven, the trio appeared on the Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour with disappointing results. However, they were spotted by Lola Moore, then the preeminent agent for child actors, who expressed an interest in Roger and arranged his audition for the part of eight-year-old Homer "Packy" Lambert in the NBC Saturday morning western television series, Fury, starring Peter Graves, Bobby Diamond, and William Fawcett. He appeared in thirty-eight episodes of the series.^[5] Many of Mobley’s subsequent myriad television guest appearances were also in westerns, but he was capable of playing against type, such as his 1963 role of the troubled youngster Joby Paxton in the episode "Somehow It Gets to Be Tomorrow" of CBS's Route 66.^[6]

In 1964, after having been impressed with Mobley's performance as Gustav in Emil and the Detectives, Walt Disney signed him to the title role in the highly acclaimed and Emmy-nominated "Adventures of Gallegher" serials for his Wonderful World of Color. Gallegher is an amateur sleuth newspaper reporter, a character created by the author Richard Harding Davis.^[1] Contrary to popular rumor, it is Mobley's name that Walt Disney wrote on his very last memo.^[7]

After nine years and appearances in 118 television programs or feature films, Mobley's career was interrupted at the age of eighteen by military service. Mobley was quoted, accordingly: "Uncle Walt [Disney] had plans for me, but so did Uncle Sam, and Uncle Sam won."^[8]

Personal life

Mobley graduated from Whittier Christian High School in La Habra in Orange County, California, at which he played football. On June 7, 1968, he married his high school sweetheart, the former Sharie Barclay, whom he had met in the eighth grade. The Mobleys have three children: Rebekah Mobley Justice, Elizabeth Mobley, and Matthew Jason Mobley (born 1972), formerly a first lieutenant with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan.

Military service

In 1968, Mobley was drafted into the United States Army. After boot camp at Fort Ord, California. Mobley asked to have his term of service extended so that he could qualify for training in Special Forces. He completed parachute jump training at Fort Benning, Georgia, after having volunteered for the Special Forces training at the John F. Kennedy Center for Special Warfare at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On completion of his training, Mobley was assigned to the 46th Special Forces Company (Airborne), 1st Special Forces Group. He returned to the United States in November 1970, after service in South Vietnam,^[4] having been honorably discharged from the Army.^[9]

Back in civilian life, Mobley found that he had little savings from his extensive work as a child actor and was unsuccessful in reviving his acting career.^[10] He and his bride, Sharie, relocated to Beaumont, Texas, where he joined the police department. He was also a criminal investigator for the cities of Vidor and Jasper, Texas.^[11]

Multiple jobs

Besides law enforcement, Mobley worked many blue collar jobs, including pipefitter, longshoreman; welder; bull rider; lumberjack; milk delivery driver; Federal Express truck driver; prison guard; and lifeguard. He was a football/basketball coach at a private school in Beaumont. He was employed as a climber/inspector on wind turbine farms around the nation before retiring.^[1] As of 2016, he reported working near Little Rock, Arkansas, as a carousal operator at the Little Rock Zoo.^[12]

Political and religious beliefs

According to his autobiographical sketch on his Facebook page, Mobley appears to be a staunch Christian conservative who opposes legalized abortion, same-sex marriage, and divorce. He calls the Bible his favorite book. He is a member of the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod.

Filmography

References

Bibliography

• Goldrup, Tom and Jim (2002). Growing Up on the Set: Interviews with 39 Former Child Actors of Film and Television. McFarland & Co. p. 210-217. ISBN 1476613702. 
• Holmstrom, John (1996). The Moving Picture Boy: An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995. Norwich: Michael Russell, p. 288-289.

External links

• Roger Mobley Official Website
• Roger Mobley at the Internet Movie Database